Don't You Want Somebody to Love?
by Mariel Nightstalker
Summary: General Sephiroth is losing his mind and Harry Potter just wants to know the meaning of life. CROSSOVER SLASH Sephiroth/Harry WARNING: Contains disturbing content including but not limited to prostitution, gore, and language.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: I've been getting requests to do another HP/FF7 crossover ever since I finished Soaring Comets, so here you go! Consider this proof that I do listen to feedback, even if it takes me a while to get my ass together. Of course, this was also written because almost nobody has done anything with this pairing (that I know of), and that is a gross oversight in my opinion.

Warning: This is a slash story, which means that homosexual themes will be strongly (possibly graphically) present. Also, there may be mentions of prostitution, foul language, and graphic violence. Do not read this if any of those are going to upset you.

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Final Fantasy VII. They belong to J.K. Rowling and Square Enix respectively. I make no profit from this. The title is taken from Jefferson Airplane's song of the same name.

Title: Don't You Want Somebody to Love?

CHAPTER 1

When the truth is found to be lies  
and all the joy within you dies  
don't you want somebody to love  
don't you need somebody to love  
wouldn't you love somebody to love  
you better find somebody to love

When the garden flowers baby are dead yes  
and your mind [your mind] is [so] full of red  
don't you want somebody to love  
don't you need somebody to love  
wouldn't you love somebody to love  
you better find somebody to love

your eyes, I say your eyes may look like his [yeah]  
but in your head baby I'm afraid you don't know where it is  
don't you want somebody to love  
don't you need somebody to love  
wouldn't you love somebody to love  
you better find somebody to love

tears are running [ah, they're all] running down your breast  
and your friends baby they treat you like a guest.  
Don't you want somebody to love  
don't you need somebody to love  
wouldn't you love somebody to love  
you better find somebody to love

~Somebody to Love by Jefferson Airplane

Ginny was talking about something, but he stopped paying attention several minutes ago. During the excitement of his youth and the following massacre that they now called the Second War, he hadn't had time to really analyze normal human behavior. But now that it was peace time, he had ample time to despise the pettiness and vanity inherent to all humanity.

He wondered if committing suicide because he couldn't bear to live in absolute security was ridiculous.

On top of his new discovery of how normal humanity functioned, he was bored out of his mind. He was in the Auror program because that was what Ron wanted to do, but once the initial business of tracking down renegade dark lord supporters had been dealt with, all they had to handle was the occasional domestic dispute or lost pet. To supplement his influx of free time, he'd taken up knitting, a cooking class, and helped out in the Department of Mysteries. But it wasn't enough. He was drowning without a sense of purpose, and every day it got a little bit harder to pretend that he was as happy as everyone else.

"Harry, are you listening to me?"

He started. "Yes, dear, of course! I hang on your every word."

She flushed and gave him a kiss. He let it happen, not contributing much but not fighting it either. He'd found that flattering her was the best way to prevent getting called on his inattention. She made to move into his lap, but he stopped her with a hand against her stomach.

"Come on Ginny, we're in public. I don't want to give the press anymore information about my private life."

She seemed disappointed, but nodded agreement. "Well, let's go home, then. And don't you dare say that you have to go back to work! I called your boss and he told me that you always have the weekends off, no matter what you've been telling me about over-time."

Damn it! He was going to chew out his boss the next time he could slip away for that indiscretion. Who cared if everyone in his department was worried about his love life? It wasn't any of their business whether or not he wanted to spend more time at the office than with his beautiful girlfriend.

Ginny was great, and she had stayed with him in spite of everything that had happened when the kid gloves came off. He appreciated her, really he did, but he couldn't seem to make himself love her. He hoped with all of his soul that she never knew this. She couldn't handle that kind of rejection, not from him.

As they walked home, since she didn't want to apparatate, he decided that killing himself would probably destroy her and therefore wasn't a real option either.

Reaching their tidy little cottage on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, they made love inside. Harry had never felt emptier in his life.

000

Joan laid out the daily boxes of paperwork in a neat stack beside his desk, stacked in order of importance, and he nodded at her in acknowledgement. His coffee was brewed to its usual perfection, and some weak sunlight was puncturing the constant cloud cover of Midgar.

All in all, he should have been in as good a mood as his secretary, but he couldn't remember ever truly being a good mood before.

With a sigh, he began to sort through the first box. It was full of the newest applicants for the SOLDIER cadet program. There was an entire team of subordinates who took care of the testing and assessment processes, but he was adamant that he know the names and appearances of everyone who joined the army. If he didn't like something about an applicant, he marked their profile with red pen.

Later, his secretary would go through the box and remove all of the red-marked applicants. They were demoted back to the cadet process, and were forced to work their way back up the ladder again. If he came across their file twice and was dissatisfied both times, that person would be kicked out of the Shinra Military Department to go home to their families or find a job as a janitor.

He felt no guilt in eliminating those he found to be superfluous or a drag on the overall quality of his army. The fact that the President technically owned the army was of no consequence- they were his men. He trained most of them before his paperwork became too cumbersome, he designed the system by which they were tested, and he inspired them whenever he could to be all that they could be (within reason). They were his.

He broke his record of red marked applicants that morning. The quality of applicants had been dropping steadily in the past five years, and he wasn't sure why. Soon he would have to lower his standards just to keep the main army at their required number of infantry.

Joan stepped inside with a second cup of coffee right as he drained his first, supernaturally on cue as always. He nodded at her, and she smiled thinly. Joan was in her mid-fifties and much older than all of the other corporate secretaries. She was his personal slave rather than any of the other women out of pure skill and experience. He'd fought a long and bitter battle for her with the President himself, who succumbed to his desire for unskilled temptress types and therefore left Joan free for the claiming.

The last box beckoned to him as he took his lunch break, and he felt proud of himself for accomplishing so much so fast.

Just as he was reaching for the lid, Joan buzzed his desk in warning. She always did that when there was a potential for an unexpected visitor. They even had a special code: one buzz meant harmless, and two meant deep shit.

A second buzz did not follow, so he knew that it had to be one of his lieutenants or an intern trying to climb the corporate ladder by bringing him a pastry. The door opened with more force than usual, and he knew that it was the third category of harmless. He was negotiating with Joan to put him in the three buzz section.

Zack snapped a sharp salute, with even his toes pointed just-so, and then slumped with all the grace of a sulking teenager into his visitor couch. Like clockwork, his skull smacked against the wooden headrest and he groaned, reaching back to rub his head.

"I thought I asked you to get a new couch!"

"You have. You demand that I replace it every time you visit me at work. I keep the couch primarily to make my visitors uncomfortable. It is a subtle warning to not get too comfortable in my presence."

Zack groaned. "Why does everything you do have to be so complicated?"

"To discourage people from getting too closely involved. Most people, when confronted with an unexpected problem, will either ignore it or distance themselves from it. It is a very useful skill if one wishes to have any peace in life." Sephiroth said this in the exact tone of voice meant to make Zack feel foolish for asking. Zack flushed a little, but did not look cowed. He started to bounce his knee energetically as Sephiroth removed the lid and placed the first set of files on his desk.

"Well…good for you, man." He sat up, looking more cheerful as he remembered what he had come in to say, "Oh! I was meaning to tell you: I finally figured out the answer to our little discussion on Saturday."

Sephiroth resisted the strong urge to remove Zack before he could finish what he had to say. Zack had kept him in his office two hours longer than usual on Saturday night out of pure will power, describing that he needed to find an outlet for his stress. According to the SOLDIER, if he didn't find some kind of hobby or other relaxing activity soon, he was going to start throwing people out the window when he was frustrated. He'd, of course, demanded evidence supporting this assumption and was not satisfied with Zack's response that _everyone _knew that stress was a fact of life.

"Do tell."

"It's so simple I am embarrassed that I didn't think of it immediately-"

"Lieutenant, cut to the chase, please."

He waved a hand. "I'm getting there. Do you see what I meant about the stress?" seeing the look on his General's face, he gulped and continued, "Uh, ignore that. Anyways, the solution is that you need to have sex. Lots of it, in fact; as much as you can handle."

Sephiroth calmly began sorting the files on his desk into Read and Shred piles. The ones that he shredded were the proposals that he found too ridiculous or badly-spelled to be worth even a passing second glance.

"Zack?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Get out of my office. Come back when you have a better idea."

Zack was gone in the blink of an eye. You could say whatever you wanted about his unprofessional demeanor, but he had a true animal's instinct when it came to danger and that was what made him so very good at his job. His skill in combat was also the only reason Sephiroth hadn't thrown him out a window yet.

He placed the monthly request from Zack for a Candy Striper equivalent for the SOLDIER lounges in the 'To Shred' pile.

000

It was Sunday and he was supposed to be at home relaxing, but Ginny went out with Ron to see the Chudley Cannons and he was never the type to let a chance at alone time escape him in the face of work.

The Department of Mysteries was operating on its weekend skeletal staff, and they were grateful for his volunteer slave labor. Today's problem was a strange glowing orb that radiated bizarre magical energy. There were two others like it, one that created fireballs when held and another that created involuntary sleeping spells on everyone else in the room other than the one holding it.

Nothing happened when they held the third orb, and they were trying to figure out why.

Harry returned from getting coffee for the group, out of breath and excited. He would never admit it, but working in the Department of Mysteries, despite the bad memories it held from 5th year, was one of his favorite places to be. The endless puzzles and outright curiosities made his blood rush like it had when he was fighting Voldemort, and he was addicted to the feeling.

"Any changes while I was gone?" He asked, sinking gratefully into a roller a chair and flicking his wand to distribute the Starbucks's offerings amongst the staff.

Kellan shook his head woefully. "Not a blip. It's as well-behaved as the grave. The other ones are easy enough: a little skin contact and they work their magic, but this one…it has more of the magic than the other two, but we just can't pinpoint what kind."

Harry nodded, watching the staff disperse to their separate stations now that they had their coffee. "Where did you find them again?"

"Greenland; they were buried inside a whale's intestines. One of those crazy thrill-seekers was pitching a tent out there when he found the poor creature- it somehow set off the fire one and blew itself clear out of the water. We can only hope that it was asleep from the other one when it happened."

Harry winced. "Yeah…"

They sipped their coffee in silence, studying the mysterious swirling depths of the gray sphere. Harry sat up straighter as an idea occurred to him.

"Do you think that it might be a prophecy, or some form of memory storage?"

Kellan chewed the inside of his cheek thoughtfully. "That is a thought. Because then it could only be opened by whoever it belongs to, like a prophecy. That would explain why nothing happens when we touch it when it obviously not empty."

"Or maybe it is designed to confuse the shit out of whoever finds it?" Harry joked, and Kellan kicked his roller chair, moving him back several feet. Harry rolled closer again, finished his coffee, and politely asked, "Do you mind if I give it a go?"

Kellan shrugged. "I don't care. The safety wards are still up from earlier, so it can't hurt. I'd my wand aside if I were you, though. It's like potions- you never know what the energies are going to do if they connect."

"Cheers, mate." Harry set his wand aside, leaned forward, and closed his hand around it. It was cold at first, like glass, but then it began to rapidly heat up. The room swirled crazily, and he wondered vaguely if it had a narcotic effect, similar to the sleeping effect that the other orb had. Kellan was screaming something, and he wanted to tell him to stop worrying, to tell him that he was fine…He was just fine.

The swirling continued, gradually changing from the booth in the Department of Mysteries to a broad expanse of forest. He landed on the floor of it with a loud crack, his back breaking a flimsy branch. He looked dizzily up at the canopy of greenery. He was in a tiny natural clearing, ringed by trees who wouldn't be out of place in the Redwood Forests on account of the their incredible size. He could hear happy animal chattering, and saw a few bright flashes here and there as exotic birds flew through the trees. The sun shone hotly down on him through the dappling effect of the leaves, and he could see bits of brilliantly blue sky.

It was absolutely beautiful, and he really wished that he could enjoy it without the misfortune of having a large stick poking into his delicate spine. Rolling over, he tried to get his bearings but was hit by a wave of dizziness

He groaned, and slipped slowly out of consciousness.

000

End chapter 1

Let me know what you guys think!


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: Thank you to all of you who reviewed! I appreciate the anticipation and appreciation you feel for this story. I'll try not to let you down, and make this awesome!

CHAPTER 2

Sephiroth's private quarters were possibly the most private rooms in the entire Shinra building. He was the only one who'd set foot inside them since the building was built and furnished. He cleaned them himself every week on Sunday night, and had his groceries delivered to Joan, who set them aside for him to take home at night. The rooms were kept protected by three layers of security: a key-card, a thumbprint, and a password 32 characters long that only he knew.

Private was the way he liked it. There was something about spending one's formative years strapped naked to a laboratory table with a crowd of scientists standing around that really instilled a need for personal space.

Of course, this seemed to hurt his friends when he refused to let them in, but they were gone now so what did it matter? The past belonged in the past. If he thought about it long enough, he was sure he would become insane, so he shoved any memories that cared to surface forcibly downwards and away. He did not want to remember.

There was a piece of mail, slipped under his door, and he discovered that it was just a piece of notepaper with Lieutenant Fair's handwriting on it.

He sighed and unfolded it.

_General Sir, _

_I know that you were just going to forget all about our little conversation earlier, so I am reminding you to go out there and find some ass! I mean it!_

_Zack_

_PS Please, please do not kill me._

Some people really didn't know how to stop while they were ahead.

000

Harry slowly regained consciousness, aware that there was something touching him. His instincts kicked in and he jerked several feet away from whatever it was, his eyes snapping open. He righted his glasses, and gaped at what he was seeing. It was a snake. This wasn't an ordinary garden snake, or even a mid-size reptile. From what he could see of its endless body, it was at least 40 feet long and thicker than a tree trunk, stretching backwards as far as he could see deep into the jungle.

Its black eyes looked at him with almost fond amusement, and he realized how pathetic his attempt to put some distance between them. Clearing his throat, he decided to beg for his life in the politest way possible.

"Ah, excuse me if I am trespassing on your territory. I meant no harm, and am a stranger in this land. I am unaware of your customs, but I would appreciate it if you didn't eat me because of my ignorance."

The snake tilted its head and slithered closer until it could stare directly into his eyes with one beach-ball sized eye. He gulped but didn't look away.

"You can talk."

"Yes."

It retracted a few inches and tasted the air around him with its tongue. It was three feet long and very red. Its breath smelled like blood and dead things, and Harry held his breath until the massive jaw closed again.

"You smell like magic, and fire. I will not eat you. You would not taste good."

He breathed a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank you…I think."

The snake huffed and made to slither away, but he called after it, "Hey! Could I bother you for some directions? I'd like to be in at least a marginally populated area so I can find some food and get out of your way for good."

The snake stopped and then jerked its massive head for him to walk beside it. They walked in silence beneath the stifling heat trapped under the leaf-cover for what felt like miles, flies and what looked like mosquitoes dancing around them. Harry resisted the urge to scratch his face, which felt very much like someone had rubbed poison oak and bacon grease all over it.

Sweat dripped slowly down his back, and he was very grateful when they came across a small watering hole. The snake snapped up several monkey-like creatures (except for the disturbing fact that they had six eyes) while he sampled the water, splashing some down the back of his shirt. His arms ached from carrying his coat, which he hadn't had a chance to remove before the incident, but he kept it anyway. He was in an unfamiliar land, and who knew what sort of weather was around the corner. Besides, he could also make a crude tent out of it come nightfall.

He desperately hoped that he would be out of the jungle by sunset. The snake couldn't be the largest predator in these woods, and he didn't speak any other animal languages.

For once, unlike the multitude of wishes he'd made during the war against Voldemort, his wish was granted. The sun was just dipping beneath the horizon when they broke the cover of the jungle. He could see the outline of a village in the distance.

"There is the only village that I know of."

Harry nodded. "Thank you. This was very generous of you."

"I was bored. Stay out of my jungle…I do not want to smell your strange fire again. It makes me uneasy. You smell like death too."

"No problem. I'm not a big fan of jungles anyway. Cheers!" He cheerfully trooped off towards the village, not bothering to look back even as he heard the great sighing sound of the snake's immeasurably long body slithering off into the jungle. He shuddered.

The village turned out to be a lot farther away than he'd thought, and it was pitch dark except for the sliver of moonlight by the time he reached its outskirts. He passed a pen filled with large fluffy chicken-like birds that cooed quietly at him, and stopped to get a closer look once he finished processing that he'd just seen a pack of _giant chickens._

It was official, he decided, while he stroked a bird's neck. He was either in some kind of crazy narcotic dream or Hermione's theory about alternate universes had finally been proved correct. Or maybe these were just some pet project of Luna's. She'd disappeared for two years after Hogwarts, and then turned up out of the blue at his 20th birthday party to announce that she'd proved the existence of Nargles. Nobody had the heart to tell her that almost nobody there cared.

Needless to say, that was one of his more memorable birthdays. The two that'd followed were decidedly dull, with less press clamoring outside his lawn every year. If he'd stayed there, they would've forgotten about him by the time he hit thirty.

The bird hissed when he stopped stroking its feathers for a moment, lost in thought, and he hurried to return to his soothing strokes. It bent its head and nipped at his collar, which was still soaked with sweat. He smiled sadly, reminded of Hedwig and the similar such displays of affection she used to make.

Eventually his already exhausted arm gave out, and he made to move away. The bird hissed loudly, and several other dozing birds started to squawk. Panicking, Harry soothed the bird as best as he could, not wanting some angry farmer to come bursting out of his house with a shotgun.

The bird beckoned him to come inside the pen, and his exhausted mind couldn't think of a good reason not to. He climbed over the railing and followed the bird to a hay pile heaped in one corner of the pen. Grabbing his by the back of his neck, it hoisted him into the hay and settled down on top of him.

He grunted at the sudden weight, and wriggled until only half of the massive bird was crushing him. He fell asleep stroking its neck.

000

He was having the dream again. Hojo claimed that Sephiroth's dreams didn't mean anything when he'd first asked at the tender age of six, that they were just images his subconscious was broadcasting while his body obtained the necessary rest. He'd heard differently in Wutai.

In Wutai, dreams could mean anything from future prophecies to character flaws he needed to mend. Rolling over in his sleep, he pulled his pillow tightly to his chest just like he did when he was very young. It was an action that he only performed in his sleep, when he was entirely unaware of how vulnerable it made him look.

The woman loomed over him. Her face was blurred, the same as always. Her long hair hung over one shoulder and tickled his face. He gripped a lock of it tightly in his fist, squeezing and pulling lightly. She was crying, and he knew that he wanted to stop what it was that was making her cry, but he couldn't. He wasn't strong enough and she wouldn't let him protect her.

Frustration and sadness poured through him, and he shivered in his sleep, fists clenching until his knuckles were white.

He hated this feeling: powerlessness. He hated it because he didn't know what to do when confronted with it. He was so fast and so strong and smart enough to break any computer test that tried to measure his intelligence. If he couldn't do something, a part of him died.

Something jerked the woman back, and she shrieked. Her hair, so long and soft, floated out of his hand and out of sight.

His hands slowly unclenched the pillow and he rolled away from it.

He woke up in a particularly foul temper the next morning and almost yelled at Joan before she gave him her standard look. She had a specific look that she gave him when she thought he was being unreasonable or out of line, which happened rarely.

He nodded at her, cowed once more, and drank the coffee she brought him meekly.

Looking over the most important documents of the day, he saw that the President was now demanding a small squadron of Second Class SOLDIERS to accompany him in addition to his usual six Turk operatives.

Sephiroth scowled at the request. Grabbing the nearest pen, he wrote down the names of his most unruly Soldiers. If the President wanted SOLDIERS, he was going to get them, but they damn well weren't going to be the cream of the crop!

He felt strangely light after his moment of passive-aggressiveness, and buzzed Joan to request a muffin from the café several floors below. He liked to celebrate his small victories with sugar, which was forbidden by Hojo.

Hojo could suck it. He was going to eat a damned muffin if he wanted one.

000

Harry awoke in an unfamiliar place yet again. He grumbled a little under his breath, and tried to figure out where he was now. Opening his eyes, he saw yellow, lots of yellow. He frowned and pushed on the yellow thing.

It cooed and moved off of him. A massive, friendly avian face blinked down at him. It had blue eyes, and would have been quite nice-looking if he didn't feel like utter shit. The small piece of fruit that he'd eaten yesterday was upsetting his stomach, and his throat was dry. He felt feverish, and his face itched like nobody's business.

Damn those mosquitoes!

The bird moved back even farther to eat some greens from a trough. Harry blinked sleepily at the trough, and then looked up. There was a .man with a large bucket of water by his foot and a rake for the greens looking at him with amazement.

"Hell's bells, where did you come from?"

"I could ask you the same thing," Harry snapped before he could think. Alternate universe or no alternative universe, Harry Potter was not a morning person. "I came through here last night and your bird kidnapped me!"

The man snorted. "Yes, well, Jessie does seem to have taken to you." He patted the huge bird's neck fondly. "She's got a motherly streak a meter wide."

"Oh."

"Come back with me to the house, young man. We'll see if my wife is willing to make some more breakfast; you look ready to fall over dead from hunger!"

Harry nodded politely. "Thank you. That's very kind of you."

"Oh, it's no trouble! You can tell us where you're from over breakfast. I've never heard someone talk the way you do."

He nodded again. "Yeah, sure."

Shit! What was he going to tell them? He would have to think on his feet again.

The old excitement stirred in his chest. It was kill or be killed all over again, and he couldn't be happier to have the prospect of uncertainty back in his life again. Maybe this was a blessing in disguise?

000

End chapter 2


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

"I don't know how I came to be in the forest. One moment I was in the office trying to figure out what a glowing ball was, and the next I was dumped in the jungle."

Maude nodded sympathetically as he finished his highly-edited story, patting his hand. "I no expert, but my guess is that what you touched must've been some of that new experimental Materia that the people at Shinra Labs are working on. They say that they're going to solve the traffic jams and upgrade everything so maybe that was some kind of transporting device that got sent to the wrong place."

"Ah." He had no idea what a Materia was, but he wasn't sure that he wanted to know either. He couldn't ask, either, or else he would ruin his web of lies. As far as Maude and Carl were concerned, he was from a small town in the plains that'd received a strange package and taken it to the town postal office to have it seen to, only to have his accidental teleportation to the jungle.

"You're one lucky son of a bitch." Carl piped up, getting a swat from his wife for his language. "There are things in that jungle that'll make a man's blood run cold. You could've been eaten within a couple of seconds."

"Oh, stop scaring him!" Maude scolded, returning from the other room with a small white jar in her hands. "Here, honey, this is for your bug bites. They should go away by tonight, but if they don't just apply it again."

"It works so quickly?" Harry asked without thinking.

Maude nodded with pride. "Yes, young man, it does. It was my mother's recipe, and I always keep a couple of jars on hand. The mosquitoes don't stay in the jungle."

"Thank you!"

She smiled and handed him the jar. "You can have that. I'm sure these won't be the only bites you'll get on your way home."

His mind froze. Oh…right. He had to go somewhere to live, didn't he? The orb, or Materia, was missing so he would have to get used to living here. And he couldn't stay with Maude and Carl, because he'd lied and told them that he had a family and everything in the plains.

"I don't have any money." He blurted.

Carl frowned in thought while Maude gasped sympathetically.

"You poor thing!"

Carl rubbed his chin. "I tell you what…the Chocobos like you and I could use a little bit of help around here for a couple of days. We'll pay you for a week of helping me out with the birds, and then I'll give you directions to the nearest port where you can catch a boat back on home. Does that sound like a deal?"

Harry shook his hand firmly. "It sure does. I really appreciate this!"

"Don't mention it."

000

A week passed. The Chocobos weren't hard to tend to if you didn't mind hard simple labor, and they all seemed to like him well enough. The time had come for him to go, though, and he given his pay and a small sack filled with baked goods and some cheese.

Maude embraced him, feeling very much like Mrs. Weasley when she got emotional. She tried to say something along the lines of 'be careful', but soon became too choked up and could only mutely pat his cheek. He smiled bravely at her.

"I'll be fine. How hard can it be to find this port? You said that it's just beyond the mountains yonder, and mountains aren't the sort of landmark that you lose sight of."

Carl cackled and slapped him on the back. "That's true!"

He smiled at them, hugged Maude one final time, and left for the mountains.

This time he was prepared for the optical illusion that the broad flat fields provided, and set up camp for the night about two days walk away from the foothills. Carl had offered to drive him, but he had turned down the offer on account of what would happen to the birds without Carl's ministrations. Maude had a bad leg and had to stay indoors much of the time, and couldn't possibly manage to tend to the birds by herself.

He banked his fire for the night, rubbed some more insect repellent on himself, and went to sleep staring up at utterly unfamiliar constellations. All of those midnight classes with Professor Sinistra were a bit of a waste now.

He woke early and continued his trek.

Two days later, he was looking at a real-live port. It looked remarkably like the ports back on earth, complete with a dead fish-excrement-rotting wood smell that made his nose want to scream and curl up.

Forcing himself to remain calm and not turn around the other way and go back to the Chocobo ranch just because he was too chicken to take the stench; he made his way to the ticket office on the wharf. Inside the booth was a seedy looking man with a greasy comb over and a pinky ring.

Harry almost rolled his eyes at the cliché character.

Handing over enough money for a map with included travel brochure, he nodded to the man and settled on a bench to decide where he was going to live. Scanning the brochure, he saw several options that seemed immediately appealing. Mideel or Costa del Sol both looked promising, until he saw the cost of living in Costa del Sol and that Mideel was close to water, and not the beach kind. He didn't want to commit sensory murder every day just to live in a city.

He looked for other cities, making sure that they weren't too close to any ports. Midgar stood out. Reading the descriptive paragraph excitedly, he found himself becoming more and more fascinated by the thought of living in a city with a giant plate above it. It was also the base of a world-wide electrical company called Shinra. Maybe he could get a job with them; cities with large companies usually needed grunts in some form or another.

Reaching into his pocket for a pen, he circled Midgar and then went through the rest of the brochure just to make sure that he hadn't missed anything better. When nothing was forthcoming, he approached the man in the booth again and purchased a one-way boat ticket to the same continent Midgar was on. Once there, he was supposed to catch a train or a bus, depending on his personal preference.

"You got big dreams, eh?"

He frowned, accepting his ticket and noting that the boat would take off in an hour. "I beg your pardon?"

He man jabbed his thumb at the ticket. "Midgar. All the young kids go there now; they think all their dreams will come true if they live packed like sardines surrounded by other people."

Harry looked at him coldly, and the man's leer melted like snow in sunshine. "I don't think that it's any concern of yours, thank you."

"I...uh, of course!"

He stalked off to wait on his boat.

000

Joan buzzed three times. He'd finally convinced her that Zack deserved his own buzz signal, because he didn't into either of the other normal categories. Their relationship was more like an awkward one-sided friendship.

Zack burst into his office, sweaty and out of breath. He tried to say something, failed, and sat on the uncomfortable couch until he could talk; all the while gesticulating incoherently at the small packet of papers he was holding.

Taking pity on him, he snatched the folders out of his hands. After unwrapping the first, he turned it to an angle and let the contents slide out. They were someone's notes, written on a combination of lined and graph paper with little diagrams and formulas written in the margins of the main body of notes.

He frowned, knowing that he recognized that handwriting from somewhere-

Hojo!

With a foul look on his face, he picked up the top sheet and began to read. Zack regained his composure, but he was only aware of this as a background detail. The notes were about something called 'Project S'. As he skimmed, he noticed certain disturbing coincidences. The notes were obviously detailing a human experiment, then subject male and roughly his own age and physical dimensions.

This wasn't…

But then he encountered a small note on the back side of one of the sheets that wondered why the subject's hair had bleached silver, despite being quite young and healthy.

"Get out." He didn't recognize the sound of his own voice.

"What, not even a thank you? I went through hell to get those for you! I actually snooped around in the science labs for you, in Hojo's personal _mail slot, _and you won't even-"

"_Now, Zack!"_

He was off the couch and half-way through the door in less than a second. "Sorry for upsetting you, sir."

The door shut with a click behind him, and Sephiroth put his face in his hands.

000

Midgar was…not what he was expecting. When he'd seen it from the bus window as nothing more than a massive black blob on the barren landscape, he'd thought that it looked like that simply because he was too far away to see the real details.

But he was wrong. It was a hulking, walled monstrosity with what vaguely resembled a spider crouching over it. He decided that that must be the Upper Plate. A building stretched high into the cloud cover, the top of it invisible from his angle. That must be the Shinra Headquarters, he decided.

The bus stopped just within the walls, where you were required to either show your papers or pay to have some made if you were from the boonies and didn't have any. Falling into the latter group, Harry followed an old lady who looked like a gypsy inside the cramped government office to have his photo taken and his fingerprints stamped and a whole lot of other tedious things. The process only took 45 minutes, but he was still ready to kill something by the time he was done.

He opened the passport-like booklet and took out his I.D. card. The photograph made him look like a Russian terrorist.

"Why do those cameras make everyone look so unfortunate?" He muttered, stashing the I.D. in his wallet. He saw his Ministry pass and sighed. As much as he was enjoying being in an unfamiliar place where he had to think on his feet, he did miss home. He wondered what Ginny was doing without him…if she was alright.

To take his mind off of his girlfriend (ex-girlfriend? He didn't know what the protocol was for universe-hopping), he counted what remained of his cash and decided that he needed to find a job _fast._

Taking off for the newspaper stand he'd spotted outside the government office, he stole a newspaper and found a bus stop to wait at. The area he was in, Sector Something-or-Other (he didn't pay attention to the sign) was a little on the dingy side, but the people walking around were fully dressed and there were only the equivalents of villages of people living in cardboard boxes instead of the cities he had seen while trekking through the nasty section of India.

He opened his paper and sorted through it until he found the job section. Scanning the vocations, he raised his eyebrows at some of the stranger posts. How many weapons shops could there be in one city, anyone? And why did they all need clerical help?

He circled a few to check out that weren't asking for previous experience, and one janitorial position at the Shinra building as a back-up.

Surprisingly, he got the very first job he applied to. The man behind the desk, who could've been mistaken for a brick wall if the lighting was bad, just grunted as soon as Harry came through the door with the newspaper advertisement and handed him a uniform- two sizes too big.

"You can start now."

The man didn't provide his name or say anything else, so he shrugged and went behind the curtain the man indicated over by the armor area. It was a changing room of sorts, with stickers advertising all kinds of monstrous fire arms ringing the cracked mirror. He donned the gray trousers and collared shirt, and adjusted the waist of the trousers by rolling it several times until the cloth was thick enough to not fall around his ankles to second he tried to walk.

Settling down in the cramped back office jammed with receipts and folders stuffed with weapons orders; he grabbed a piece of paper and a pen to take an inventory first. The pay was good, and he should be able to find somewhere to stay tonight once he was finished with his first shift.

Things couldn't have been better. For the first time he truly had a clean slate.

000

End chapter 3


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

He had been fused, or crossbred, with something he didn't understand. He was determined to find out what it was. Hojo's notes referred to it as some kind of consciousness, and spoke of it with great respect. If he could, he would communicate their connection with this creature somehow when they met. Perhaps it would have some insight into the differences between him and the rest of humanity…perhaps it felt as isolated as he did.

Leaning back in his chair, he ignored his paperwork for the first time in favor of looking out at the gray view of the Upper Plate provided by his too-large window. His desk was originally placed in front of it, with the view at his back, but he never could bear leaving himself so vulnerable to attack and had rearranged his furniture so that he was against the side wall and could observe the door and the window simultaneously out of the corners of his eyes.

There were no birds flying in the sky now. Years ago, you could still see the occasional bird of prey or small flight of geese soaring overhead, but these days there was nothing. He didn't find any spiders in his quarters anymore, either.

He sighed; tired of the confused directions his thoughts were dancing in, he looked back down at his desk and tried to focus. After a while, he got back into his routine and managed to plough through two thirds of what he needed to get done that day before his attention wandered again. That'd been happening a lot lately, even before the notes Jake gave him last week.

On a whim, he pulled out a sheet of graph paper he normally strategized with, and laid it flat on his desk. He looked at it, twirling his expensive pen, and then put it to the paper. He pulled it across the surface in a smooth, inhumanly perfect, line.

Frowning, he tried a swirl like he'd seen the secretaries do when they were bored and didn't realize that he was watching them. it turned out as perfectly coiled as a spring, without a single wobbly bit.

"Damn it."

Apparently, he couldn't doodle properly. He was going to start keeping a checklist of the normal human things that he couldn't do. Reaching into the drawer, he pulled out another sheet of paper and neatly wrote 'Things Sephiroth Can't Do' across the top in his usual blocky letters. No matter how hard he tried, everything he did ended up perfectly geometrically balanced, which made his handwriting impossible to copy without a machine.

'Doodle.

'Whistle'

'Lose track of time'

He looked at his list with dissatisfaction. He folded it up into a perfect triangle and tucked it into his breast pocket. If only he could do these things (and the many others that he would write later when he wasn't supposed to be working), maybe he wouldn't feel so estranged from people. Granted, the people you usually found in Shinra weren't pleasant for anybody to be around, but still…

If he could make more mistakes, then maybe he could expect less of others instead of setting impossibly high standards. Maybe the thing, this JENOVA, would understand his unique problem.

000

During the week he'd been working as a lowly clerk, Harry had seen just about every kind of rough character on the planet come through the shop. There were guys so scarred it hurt to look at them, guys who twitched if you looked at them the wrong way, and guys who leered at him like he was a Playboy bunny.

"Here's your bag, sir!" He smiled cheerfully as he handed the man tall enough to rival Hagrid his hefty bag. "Be sure to come back, sir!"

The man grunted and shut the door behind him more politely than he'd opened it.

Rough characters or not, they were still customers and Harry believed in service with a smile. Besides, he couldn't blame them for purchasing guns- he'd been startled awake three times last week to the sound of gunshots. The entire Lower Plate seemed to be just one big bad neighborhood. To combat, this, he bought a double-barreled shotgun for his home defense and a knife half the length of his forearm to wear on his person. He had no idea what the laws were about carrying concealed weapons were, but wasn't that the whole point of concealing it?

He looked around the shop, checking the dark corners for any lingering creeps, and then got up and started locking up the cases. Unlike in his world, the cases weren't glass affairs with alarms. No, these were thick sheets of some kind of metal with several alarm systems. It was very impressive, and he felt like he was inside a knight's armor as soon as he'd locked everything.

Retrieving his things from the back, he locked that door as well and set the alarms. With a sigh, he did a final check-up and then left.

The streets were brighter late at night than they were at noon; thousands of neon lights helping him avoid the worst patches of sidewalk. Everything under here was deteriorating, as all great projects do when they are not maintained.

His apartment was only two blocks from his workplace, because he was not a suicidal idiot, and he kept alert on the way. He'd only been accosted once, three days ago, and it had only been an elderly drunk, but it could have been much worse…

Someone screamed. It was very close, and the kind that you make when you've fought as hard as you can but the opposition is just too strong. He rushed towards the source on instinct, his body giving him no time to think about whether he was rushing into a trap or not.

He rounded a corner and saw a man, huge and dark in the dimmer lighting of the alley, strangling one of the local prostitutes. She looked badly beaten, not that he had much time to look. Adrenaline coursed through him like a narcotic, and he positively leaped through the air. There was a flash of light as a sign of a naked woman caught his blade, and then an ugly wet noise as he sank it into the man's neck, right where it connected to his shoulder. The blade sank in to the hilt, and the man slumped to the ground, making hoarse sounds as his blood spurted onto Harry and the prostitute.

His body narrowly missed landing on the woman, who was on her hands and knees, sobbing for breath. He knelt beside her, retrieving his knife but otherwise ignoring the corpse. He put his hand on her back and massaged it, letting the blood flow back upwards easier.

She coughed and looked up, catching sight of him. She cautiously peeked at her assailant, and then back at him.

He tried not to notice that she was missing the entire lower half of her clothing.

"Thanks, kid."

He smiled wryly and helped her up, carefully steadying her when she swayed dangerously. Blood dribbled down her chin from what he suspected to be a broken nose. Pulling off his jacket, he wrapped it around her middle and let it hang down like a sarong skirt.

"Come on, I'll fix your nose."

What would Hermione say if she knew that he took prostitutes home with him?

They sat in his bathroom, her on the toiler seat and him bending down in front of her with a gauze bandage. After carefully cleaning the area, he affixed the adhesive strip that would keep her nose in place and then handed her some wipes to clean herself more thoroughly. He left and went into the only other room, which contained a small stove set on top of a lopsided table he'd found in the street, a cooler filled with ice that he kept anything perishable in, and a mattress.

The door opened a crack, and he turned to see her smiling boldly at him.

"Well, aren't you going to come claim your payment for doing me such a huge favor?"

He flushed. "Um, no thank you. You can have a bath if you want, though."

She seemed confused. "Wait…you took me in off the street, let me get blood and you don't want to know what else on your coat, fixed me up, and you don't want anything? Please, I wasn't born yesterday."

"Well, I was. Doesn't anybody know what charity is?"

She shrugged a bony shoulder. "Charity doesn't exist in this town. It hitched a ride with human decency when it left."

"I'm going to try and bring it back, then. Go on, take a bath. But give me my coat first!"

She handed it to him, and said, just before closing the door, "I'm Venus, by the way."

He snorted. "Oh? And who was your mother, the sea?"

Venus blinked. Shrugging it off, she went to bathe. Bathtubs were a rarity in the lower plate- most of the housing units, when they were first built, had those modern stand-up showers. Only rich people, love hotels, and maybe five apartment buildings in the whole city had bathtubs.

Harry, in the main room alone, got out a tin basin that he washed his clothes in and filled it with cold water. While the coat soaked, he brooded. He'd known that Midgar had problems from the moment he first saw it, but until now he'd been able to distance himself from them. Not anymore, though. Thanks to Voldemort, he had a very unique set of skills…skills that he could use to make things better around here. He wasn't stupid: he knew that the majority of the crime was organized, and that it was ultimately run by a couple of nameless and faceless beings with their fingers in a lot of pies.

That was unacceptable. He could work his way up from the bottom, starting with the petty informants and burglars, and then up to the acquaintances, then the bodyguards, the trusted friends, the working men, and finally to the bosses.

But first, he would need to think of a way to infiltrate the crime circles.

Chewing his lip, he got up to make himself some tea. He bought it from a weird little Asian lady who owned a cart from which she sold spicy food unlike any ethnic food he'd eaten on Earth. It was very strong, but he liked his tea strong.

The door creaked open, and he turned quickly. Venus stood there in one of his two towels, holding up the remains of her corset in one hand.

"I hate to impose, but I have nothing to wear. This might be Midgar, but a naked woman at night is just asking for rape."

"Oh, of course! Let me see…" He rummaged in the hamper under his bed, pulling out an old-fashioned flannel night shirt he'd bought from one of the many resale shops. Almost everything under the Plate had been owned by someone previously. "How about this? It's as close to a dress that I have. I have really narrow hips, so my trousers wouldn't fit…It's clean and warm, anyways."

She accepted the nightshirt with amusement and pulled it over her head, dropping the towel once it'd floated to her knees. Smoothing it with her hands, she smiled and then winced as she pulled at her nose. "Ow…"

Harry bit his tongue, and decided to go for it. "Why don't you stay here tonight? You can keep the nightshirt in the morning, and this way you don't have to go back out there until the night crazies are gone."

Venus sat down on his mattress and nodded eagerly. "Thank you so much!"

"Oh, uh, don't mention it. Just don't rob me in my sleep or anything."

They settled under the covers, and Harry reached over to switch off the lamp that he kept on the floor. It had flying geese painted on its side. "Goodnight, Venus."

"Goodnight…uh…"

"Harry."

"Goodnight, Harry."

000

Zack smiled at Joan and made to walk into the General's office.

"Ah-ah-ah! The General is out, Lieutenant. You will have to either leave a message or return later. His board meeting doesn't end until three o'clock."

Zack nodded. "I was actually just here to drop something off…something private. I'm sure he won't mind me leaving it on his desk, will he?"

Joan nodded at last. "Alright, but you have fifteen seconds before I come in there after you."

He saluted. "I won't let you down, ma'am!"

Stepping inside, he tried not to think of how cold and impersonal Sephiroth's office looked without him in it. It could have been a display for office equipment at a store for all the human warmth it contained.

He dropped the folder of photo-copied documents, the latest he'd robbed Hojo of, on the desk and turned to leave. But then he remembered seeing something strange on the desk. Turning back, he saw an innocent triangle of paper sitting upright on the desk. Very aware that Joan would come charging in any moment, he pocketed it.

Opening the door, he came face-to-face with Joan, who had her mouth open to reprimand him. She closed it with a 'click', huffed, and went back to her desk. He smiled brightly at her and left to return to his training session.

In the elevator, he reached into his pocket and took out the triangle. Unfolding it, he saw that it was a list.

_Things Sephiroth Can't Do:_

_Doodle_

_Whistle_

_Lose Track of Time_

_Make typos_

_Trip_

_Get tangled hair_

_Blow bubbles with gum_

_Write illegible memos_

_Flirt_

_Stare at girls without getting bored_

He raised his eyebrows. There was no mistaking that handwriting, but why would the General make a list like this? Re-reading it, he wondered how he'd figured out numbers 9 and 10

000

Sephiroth rubbed his jaw anxiously. It didn't hurt any more, but Joan sure could hit harder than he'd thought a lady of her age could!

000

End chapter 4

Sorry I didn't update this in a while- I had crazy night work crap to do and I didn't have time to do this _and _finish Discovery at the same time.


	5. Chapter 5

A/N: I'm using the American monetary system, to avoid confusion and me screwing up.

CHAPTER 5

"How well does it pay to be a prostitute?" Harry asked over their meager breakfast of cereal, eaten out of the box due to his utter lack of dishes.

Venus frowned, thinking. "Well, that really depends on what kind of services you offer, whether or not you're with a brothel or a pimp, and how high-class you are."

"Well…what are you?"

"I'm with a pimp, and he takes 60% of my earnings. I cost $50 for a BJ and $150 for penetration. I'm pretty basic, and I don't do the kinky shit they expect the high class ones to offer. Granted, the expensive girls cost a hell of a lot more than me. Some of them cost several thousand an hour." She shrugged and dug into the cereal box when he offered it to her, pulling out a handful of flakes. She chewed them slowly, not making eye contact.

"What about male prostitutes?"

She stopped chewing, and stared at him. Finally, she chewed once, twice, swallowed, and asked, "Just what are you thinking about? As you saw last night, this isn't an ideal job for anyone. Sure, you seem to know how to handle yourself in a fight, but there isn't always just one."

He nodded. "I know that, and I appreciate you being honest with me, but I have a plan."

"Oh dear…I used to have younger brothers, and I have a feeling that this plan is going to be the most ill-advised thing I'll ever hear. Come on, big boy, lay it on me. What are you going to do?"

"I'm going to seduce as many crime lords as possible, and then kill them when they're weak and unsuspecting."

"…That's not a bad idea, actually."

He smirked.

"But don't let that go to your head! It's still really stupid, and dangerous! I only do what I do because I don't know what else to do with myself, and I might get stabbed if I try to get away from the hooker scene. Hookers know everything, you know."

He snorted and put away the cereal. "I've heard that before."

"Yeah? Well, it's true."

000

"What do you mean? Why do you suddenly want to switch to part-time?"

Harry shrugged helplessly. "You said that I had to give you a week's notice, so here's my notice. I can still stay late and everything, I just only want to come three days a week now."

Robert's face turned blotchy red, a sure sign that he was getting angry, "Why? You're not working for that asshole down the street, are you? If I catch you sharing my supplier information-"

Harry raised his hand. "No, no, it's nothing like that; I would never betray your trust like that. It's just that I want to see the city more and I can afford to only work part-time with my current rent."

Robert bent down and scrutinized him. Satisfied after several highly uncomfortable moments during which Harry couldn't help but notice that his boss wasn't the sort of man that bathed often, Robert left his personal space and grunted, "Fine."

"Thank you!" relieved, Harry retreated into the back office and reorganized everything that Robert had torn apart that morning as he opened the shop.

With the additional time of his hands, he could implement his plan. Much against her will, Venus had decided to help him scope out the best places for free-lance male prostitutes to frequent, and perhaps help him get a place at a brothel if the street walking thing didn't pan out.

000

Joan buzzed his desk once, and he sighed with relief. He didn't think that he could take more bothersome people today. It was the first of the month, a day notorious amongst the inmates of Shinra on account of it being the day when various officials visited each other in person if they wished to petition for something in person. So far he'd dealt with Heidegger, who wanted some kind of granite monument made of him in one of the most prominent courtyards (Sephiroth denied any involvement with this, and sent him to Reeve instead), and Scarlet. Scarlet hadn't been there to harangue him into giving her another set of bodyguards or permission to borrow another of his weapon specialists.

He rang Joan as soon as he realized what she was implying that they do that Saturday night, and curtly told her that he couldn't even if he wanted to, claiming to be busy.

The door opened, and Reeve Tuesti fell into his visitor couch. He cracked his head on the wooden headrest and groaned, shifting forward while cradling his head.

Sephiroth chose to let him speak first, and occupied his wait with denying several requests sent to him that had absolutely nothing to do with the military. Shinra might be the current world super power, but their filing system was run by utter idiots…either that or sadists.

"General…"

"Yes, Mr. Tuesti?" They'd never spoken outside of the boardroom before, so he addressed him formally.

"I didn't who to tell this to. I tried the President, and he didn't seem to care. I tried the others, but _you _know what kind of people we work with, and I was unsuccessful in expressing the magnitude and urgency of the situation."

He leaned forward and folded his hands on his desk, "Does this situation have anything at all to do with the military? That is my department, and I claim no responsibility for anything other than that."

"I understand that. This problem transcends the departments, though. Sir, the water is poisoned."

He would've blinked if he was anyone other than himself. As himself, the only sign of surprise he gave was a faint flicker of his lower lip, "Poisoned? Poisoned with what? And how?"

Reeve shrugged. "I don't know exactly, but I have my suspicions. The tanks that we store Mako in are kept next to our water purification system, and…well, Mako is a notoriously uncontainable substance. It seeped into the water somehow, and I estimate that over half of the city has mild poisoning by now."

Stunned, he looked away from Reeve and out the window instead. He remembered the dead plants, and the missing insects. He should've realized that there was a reason that the human population hadn't been reduced to almost nothing. "Mako is why we're still alive. It's killed everything else, but finding the presence of itself in us through our drinking water and our bathing…it has left us untouched even as our surroundings are reduced to a barren wasteland."

Reeve straightened, "So you've noticed it as well?"

"Of course I have," he replied mildly, taking a sip of coffee and then eyeing his mug suspiciously, "Extra Mako also explains why my men have been restless lately…and myself also. If we don't purify the water thoroughly, you could have an insane army of super soldiers on your hands, on the hands of the city."

"That hadn't occurred to me, only the fates of the citizens with low tolerance for the poison. I am ashamed of making such an oversight."

"Don't trouble yourself with it," Sephiroth waved his hand breezily, "Since it affects my men, this is my problem as well as yours. Do you have a plan?"

Reeve hesitated, "Yes, but the President will not approve."

"Between the two of us, I don't care what the President thinks. I'm sure that he would reconsider his position if he knew that his own bodyguards could lose their minds and start the kill everything in sight, starting with him. Again, your plan?"

"AVALANCHE."

"The environment terrorists? I thought that they had disbanded."

Reeve looked guilty. "Not entirely. They are not organized anymore, but many in the city, particularly in the Lower Plate, are not happy about the careless way with which Shinra uses Mako. If they were alerted to the situation, I could send one of my informants and negotiate with them for the data they have gathered on dealing with Mako in large quantities."

"This is a plausible solution, but what if their research into the environment was not as extensive as you think? It is foolish to go into a situation with only one strategy."

"That's the other reason I came to you. I assumed that you would have more experience in this realm than I."

He considered. "I say that we also notify the crime lords."

"Crime lords?" Reeve spluttered, "But why? What use can crime lords be to us? We have the worst in the world. Just last week, while I was doing my reports, I saw that the number of child prostitutes in the city is-"

Sephiroth held up his hand to quiet him, "I am aware of that. Many of the reports on the city that you receive are also sent to me, so that I can monitor which areas need SOLDIER interference the most. The crime lords, however, are very interested in not losing their power over the city. Mass sickness, which will be the eventual result when the Mako reaches a certain level, will not be advantageous for them. They have private armies and funds at their disposal, and they are not restricted by the same legal red tape that we are. It is logical to enlist their help."

"If you say so," Reeve doubtfully conceded, "But I want you to know that I am not happy about this."

Sephiroth shrugged, "Your happiness is of no concern to me, anymore than my own. Emotions play a very small part in my line of work. Now, if you don't mind, we will continue this conversation some other time. You may contact me through my secretary whenever you wish to speak of this matter. I expect an update as soon as you make contact with AVALANCHE and have discerned their reactions."

Reeve stood, shook his hand, and turned to go. At the last moment, he turned and said, "Whether you allow them to affect your work or not, emotions are present in all of us. Suppressing them can only hurt you later. It's just something to think about."

The door shut behind him. Sephiroth eyed it for a few moments, leaving his responsibilities on the back burner. Finally, he buzzed Joan.

"Yes, sir?"

"In future, please buzz twice for the man that just exited my office. He is also one of the Heads of Departments."

"Noted, sir. Would you like me to get you some more coffee?"

"Yes."

He removed his hand from the buzzer and sat back in his chair. After composing his thoughts, especially Reeve's observation on emotions, he picked up his pen and began scanning his documents once more.

000

Harry adjusted the crotch of his new trousers with a grimace. They were tighter than he considered humane, and rode up as soon as he took so much as a single step. How could these possibly be considered attractive? If he saw someone else wearing something this tight, he would automatically wince in sympathy.

Venus looked over at him and snorted, "Will you stop fondling yourself? We aren't even there yet- you can do that later."

He sighed and glared at her without much effort. "I'd like to see you bind your breasts with duct tape and take a long jog in the hot sun. Maybe then you'd feel something similar to the agony I'm in."

"Ha! I know dozens of rent boys, and none of them have a problem with tight pants. They say that they make them feel sexier."

"Well, _I _do not get off on being squeezed in the worst way imaginable."

"Look, just try to ignore it. We're here," She waved at the dingy alley they were standing by. He squinted, and spied several young men around his age and older leaning against the walls further down the long alley. It was only sparsely lit by fluorescent light that spilled into it from the ends, and he could barely make out several other men who were conversing with the prostitutes.

He sighed, and Venus shoved at his side, "I brought you all the way here, only for you to turn up your nose?"

"Well…"

"Fine! We'll go and find a brothel, how about that?"

"That sounds a little better, for now."

"Good," She grabbed his arm, leading him to the nearest train station, "I know a really good one in the next Sector."

000

End chapter 5

Sorry I didn't update for several days. A lot of stuff had piled up, and I was bone-tired. I can't guarantee regular updates, either, because Thanksgiving is coming up and then my family will celebrate Christmas soon after that before I go out of town…for most of December. So yeah…I won't have internet when I leave, either.


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: Happy Thanksgiving!

CHAPTER 6

"You're too skinny, but you'll do."

Harry scowled but signed the waiver absolving the brothel from any responsibility for any STDs, serious injuries, psychological trauma, or death that the signer might experience. He should've been more concerned about such an extensive series of warnings, but he'd already made up his mind.

Venus tried to convince him that there were other ways to get into the path of the mob, but he counter-argued that none of them would be as effective or pay as much. Holy mission or not, he still had an apartment to pay for.

After signing up for the brothel, he separated from Venus so she could go find somewhere to sleep and he could buy some necessary tools. Stopping in a corner store, he purchased several spiral-bound notebooks, a packet of ballpoint pens, and dental floss. He was on his way to the counter when he spied several rolls of lightweight rope as thin as string.

He fingered the texture of the rope before taking down the largest roll they had and carrying it to the front.

At home, he packed some clothing and toiletries that he would keep in his room at the brothel. He'd alerted the staff to his other job as a clerk, and insured that he would be able to alternate the jobs.

After packing, he went back to the brothel. His handgun weighed down one side of his bag more than the other, making it lopsided and awkward to carry.

His room was the fourth door on the left. It was a red room, ironically, and reminded him strongly of his school dormitory years ago. Shivering a little at the collision of images, he unpacked his things in the tiny bathroom tucked between two large erotic posters. There was a compact shower, a tiny toilet, and a sink with a mirror. He tugged on it, and found a compartment behind it.

Exiting the bathroom, he sat on the bed and bounced a few times experimentally.

The door opened. The middle-aged Asian woman nodded to him, moving into the room with a cart of cleaning supplies. She vacuumed while he lay back on the bed, watching with interest. He couldn't figure out what it was, but he knew for sure that there was something unfamiliar about the slant of her eyes. Although clearly not Caucasian, she didn't look at all like Cho.

Frowning, he asked, "Excuse me, but what country are you from?"

She gave him a look that could've evaporated acid, "Wutai, idiot. Is there another country on this damned planet that has people who look like this?" she indicated her eyes and coloring, and then went into the bathroom.

"Wutai…" this settled it. He needed to buy a geography book before he made a complete fool of himself in front of the wrong person.

When she came out, he smiled sheepishly at her and held out his hand, "I'm sorry for my faux pas. I'm new here…you could say that I lived under a rock before I came to Midgar. I'm Harry, what's yours?"

"I am called Chihiro."

He smiled again, and watched her leave. He couldn't remember where he'd heard it, but someone once said that it was a very, very bad idea to be on the wrong side of your cleaning lady.

Several minutes later, late but unbothered, the owner of the brothel entered his room without knocking. He had two boys with him, both hardly of legal age.

"Harry, these are your neighbors Ian and Steve. They will tell you what is expected of you and help you get dressed," giving the boys a stern look, he left and closed the door behind him. For a moment nobody moved, but then the blond (he couldn't tell which name was whose) snorted and sat down beside him on the bed.

"God, what a pompous jackass! Anyways, I'm Ian, and that's Steve. Steve's only been here about three months, but I've been here for two years," he said all in one breath, bouncing a little, "So, since we're on in two hours, I say we get started right away."

"Okay." Harry didn't know what else to say, and followed them into the bathroom, where Steve was trying the taps of the shower. He stood to leave, and Ian demanded to know where he was going.

"You are not getting out of this, Steve! You know I hate explaining things by myself."

Steve gave him a mild look and responded, in a surprisingly soft voice, "The pipes are bad. There is only cold water…I was going to go talk to Bill about it."

"Oh. Well, go quick!" Ian shooed him out, and then turned to beam up at Harry, "Lucky for us, you don't need to use the shower for a while. Let's go pick out clothes for the time being."

He opened a small cabinet built into the wall that Harry hadn't noticed before. Inside were several plastic containers, which opened to reveal a range of gaudy and skimpy clothing.

Ian held up a pair of briefs against him and nodded his approval, "You seem like a briefs kind of guy. The important thing to remember about the selection process is that self-confidence is key to looking more attractive. Wearing something that makes you feel weird isn't going to help you."

Harry nodded and accepted the briefs. They were rather small.

"Oh, and another thing is to always use good posture, because good posture naturally puts all of your angles in their most flattering positions. The look I suggest giving anyone who makes eye contact is flirtatious, but not too flirtatious. Yes, you're a whore, but you don't want to look too eager. No one wants to fuck a Labrador who's panting for it."

He opened his mouth, but then thought better of it and just nodded to show he was listening. Ian smiled encouragingly. "See, you've already got one of the rules down. Don't talk if you're not a talking kind of guy. Me, I love to chatter, and so it looks good when I do. Just be what you are naturally and you 'll get picked a lot more often."

Confused, he asked, "Is it possible to be something that you aren't?"

"Oh yes! For my first year here, I tried so hard to be one of those cold dominatrix types and it totally didn't work for me. I was miserable the whole time, but I thought I was so cool."

"I like you the way you are: you're relaxing."

Ian nodded, "Exactly. And that is probably the most important rule of all: make the customer comfortable. If he's tense, there is no way that he is going to be able to perform, and that's what he paid the big bucks to do. They want to have a good time, so give them one."

"I'll keep that in mind," holding up the briefs, he asked, "should I wear anything else with these? Like shoes, for instance?"

Ian chewed his lip, "No, I wouldn't if I were you. You should try just a tiny bit of eyeliner, though. Your lashes are fine- you've got thick lashes for your age, and your lips look fine as well. You've got good skin, so we don't need to do any cover-up on your face; I do need you to strip, though, so we can see if you have any serious blemishes"

Harry sat on the toilet seat and unbuttoned his over shirt, and then pulled his t-shirt over his head. He tilted his hips and slid his trousers off. Ian leaned close, eyeing a nasty winding scar that ran the length of his right light. He tapped it with a fingernail.

"This looks like it hurt a lot. How'd you get it?"

Harry replied with the non-magical equivalent, "A street fight. I had a rough childhood. I've got a whole collection of souvenirs like that one."

"I can imagine. I've got one here, on my inner elbow…" he rolled up his sleeve and showed him a crescent-shaped scar, "I got this in a freak accident when I was trying to jump onto a moving train."

"Oh, I see."

Ian dug into the box of clothes, pulling out a smaller case, "This has the sanitary supplies you'll need. Do you know how to self-administer an enema?"

000

He was in the supplies room, getting a new ink cartridge for the printer for the hot new secretary, the one who kept sending him heavy looks. He'd been stopping by her department regularly and doing her little favors, hoping for a phone number.

Sephiroth was in the supplies room because Joan had just alerted him that Hojo was on his way to his office, and he didn't look happy. He spied Lieutenant Fair over by the printing supplies, and would have ignored him if he didn't spy a very familiar triangle of paper in his hands.

Sephiroth reached around Zack and snatched the missing list from his fingers.

"Hey! That's mine…oh." Zack coughed and tried to remember what the signs of guilt were so he could make sure not to show them. He wasn't doing so well, though, because Sephiroth glared at him while tucking the note into his pocket.

"I might not have religious scruples, but I do consider stealing to be wrong in most situations. That includes taking a personal item of mine from my desk and then daring to postulate to me that it is your property and not mine."

Zack actually whimpered a little. It was the tone. Sephiroth might as well have commented on the weather, but he knew in the marrow of his bones that that casual tone hid a multitude of very bad things. "Please don't suspend me, sir! I only picked it up on a whim- I thought you were making origami!"

Sephiroth raised an eyebrow, "And even if it had been origami, would that have made it any less mine?"

"No," Zack muttered.

"Exactly; however, since you seem genuinely contrite, I will not suspend you. Instead, you will spend the next two months confined to the compound. You will not go to bars; you will not socialize outside of these walls. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Now get back to work," Sephiroth swept away, hoping to god that Hojo was gone now. Being an impatient man, the Head of the Science Department never liked to wait around for someone to come back to their office.

Today, he'd made an exception. It was too late to turn around and find somewhere to hide: Hojo had seen him.

"Ah, General, you're just the man I'm looking for. I want to speak with you privately."

000

End chapter 6

Gah! It has been an unspeakably long time since I updated this! (in Abby updating time, at least) I have to apologize again…please forgive me?


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Hojo sat on the sofa, spine curved forwards as always, his head jutting forth from his shoulders like a Vulture's. He smiled at Sephiroth, yellow teeth flashing before his thin lips covered them again.

"It has come to my attention that there is a rise in the Mako level of the SOLDIERS."

Sephiroth nodded, lips clamped together. Hojo wouldn't listen to anything he had to say anyway- some things never changed, after all.

"I want you to evaluate your men for the lowest performing specimens and send them to me. I require three at the minimum."

"Why?" the question burst out without permission, his possessiveness for his men superseding his childhood terror. Not even the ghost chill of the examining table against his bare skin or the pinch of the restraining belts could keep him silent.

"I am testing out an experimental draining process and have already exhausted all other options. I need to practice on the highest level of Mako I've accomplished so far, and that means SOLDIERS. Come, Sephiroth, surely there must be several officers who have at least under-performed or upset you?"

He shook his head, "No, all of my men have performed as admirably as ever."

Hojo reached into his jacket and pulled out an electronic data pad. Turning it on, he flipped it and showed it to him, "My records show fifteen officers who have done poorly recently in anger management, and overall performance in the field."

It made a sharp sound as he slammed it onto his desk. Sephiroth was impassive even as the glare of fluorescent light reflected off of the glass screen and into his eyes.

Hojo stood, leaving his gadget where it was, "You have until noon to select three, or I will choose them myself."

000

He felt foolish standing there between Ian and another boy, who was dressed as a cheerleader. It was not unlike doing a show-and-tell in primary school, except he was wearing a pair of briefs and nothing else. He didn't even have a charming poster with pasta shells or some such to hide behind.

Considering his life's ordeals up to this point, he hadn't expected any trouble. As it was, he was having problems looking as relaxed and self-confident as Ian commanded him to be in the bathroom earlier.

He made eye contact with several of the men sizing them up, trying to make up their minds about which lucky young harlot they would cart back with them into a bedroom. He caught an older man's eye, and the other man flushed. Ah. A neophyte.

A smile flickered over his lips when the man snuck another peek at him shyly. He wasn't sure if gay men flirted the same way straight men did, but he wasn't very good at flirting in the first place. Hermione always said he was too damned honest.

He was beckoned over, and he smiled reassuringly as he met his gaze and held onto it. He sat down on the edge of the sofa, stiff and formal like a hotel's, beside him. They didn't speak, but the stranger reached out and touched his knee with his finger. The hand withdrew for a moment, and then returned. He caressed it, expression uncertain, like a child given free reign with a cookie jar.

"How's your evening?" he asked it with false energy, smiling.

"Oh, it's…its good. I'm just not used to this," he waved his hand around the low dimly-lit room, the other couches with men seated, sometimes alone and sometimes in pairs like themselves, "I haven't done this before. I've been stressed out at work lately, and I got recommended to this place."

Harry leaned forward and asked, winking slyly, "Do you want to hear a secret?"

He swallowed, and nodded.

"I haven't done this before either. I just got here a couple of hours ago, and they dumped me straight in with the pros. I guess it's lucky that you picked me; we can figure this out ourselves, and I won't be able to tell if you fuck up."

He held out his hand, and then dropped it, probably feeling ridiculous, "I'm Josh."

"I'm Satin…for now. Come on; let's go to my room so we can have a little more privacy. I feel silly just sitting out here in my briefs like it's a day at the beach."

They stood, and Harry led the way to his room, the fourth door on the left. Stepping inside, he caught sight of Steve and a spindly office type disappearing into the room beside him. Josh lingered in the hall, eyeing the numbered doors and the manky carpet.

Harry leaned against the doorframe and chose not to rush him; he could wait. His ass still felt hollow and strange from the enema, and he itched from the menthol-scented lotion he'd been slathered with. He'd done Steve's back for him while Ian did his, like monkeys lined up grooming each other.

Josh came out of his moment and stepped around Harry and into the room.

"This is bigger than I thought it was going to be."

"Yeah, I thought the same thing," Harry sat down on the bed, tucking his legs under himself and leaning back against the sideboard, "We have cigarettes, on the house, if you want them, or I could get you something to drink…? It might help your nerves."

"I'll have one if you're having one," Josh sat down, and removed his jacket.

Harry used the time he spent opening the liquor cabinet to collect himself. He looked calm enough on the outside, and his voice hadn't cracked yet, but he was as nervous as he'd ever been in his life. This was even worse than his first date with Ginny. At least then he'd known that, if things didn't work out or if he screwed up, they'd still be mates. But this…he could screw up. Steve told him that the customers were allowed to write comments on the boys, and if you got enough bad comments you were given the sack.

"Is a shot okay? I haven't mixed more than a few drinks in my life."

"Oh, yeah, that's fine. Whiskey if you've got it."

Harry heard him taking off his shoes, and caught a whiff of his sweaty feet. It was uncomfortably similar to the way Ron's feet smelt. He poured two generous shots of whiskey and turned to see Josh unbuttoning his shirt. Josh took the shot with a nod and swallowed it straight.

"Can I have another?"

"Sure."

He squirmed inside, the anticipation killing him. Ian hadn't reacted when he told him that he'd never been with a man before. All he said was that the key was to relax. It would only hurt if he tensed up. He drank his own shot and poured them both another.

Josh looked happier after he had the drinks buzzing in his system, and he crawled over the distance between them to paw at Harry's knee again, "You've got very shapely legs, do you know that?" he slurred, "That's why I noticed you. I was looking down, and then I saw these legs of yours."

Harry, to his credit, didn't blush. Instead, he smiled in a way he hoped was sultry and smoothed Josh's hair with the flat of his palm, "Thank you. That's the nicest thing anybody has ever said about my legs. Can I ask if you've made up your mind about how long you're staying and what you want tonight?"

Josh shook his head, "I don't know how this works. Do you have a card or something, with your services?"

Harry laughed to dispel the awkwardness and pulled his laminated card out from the nightstand drawer. Josh accepted it and scanned the services. His eyes widened as he read the prices.

"Oh…I can only afford an hour and a half."

Harry nodded, "That's probably better. This way you won't waste any of your time if you don't like it. Just let me set the clock so that I don't keep you overtime," he pulled out the timer, which would make a quiet chiming sound when it went off, and fiddled with the knobs. Since it was five o'clock, they'd be done at half-past six, "Now, did you want anything special or just a lay?"

"Uh, just the lay, I guess. I can't afford anything fancy-"

Harry, fed up, grabbed him by the shoulder and pulled him down beside him, against the pillows, "Relax, Josh. I don't have any experience in the fancy things anyways. Come on, don't you at least want to kiss me? I don't want to waste time talking when we could be doing something more…enjoyable."

He cringed inside. That had come out so clichéd. Why was he doing this? Sure, it was the best way to get the information he wanted, but it was so undignified.

Josh kissing his cheek distracted him from his inner monologue, and he threw himself into it. It would be over in an hour and a half anyway.

000

In the end, he knew that Hojo would choose officers he was on friendlier terms just to spite him. He chose three officers he was considering suspending for a short time, and sent them warning letters to dose up on pain killers before they were called in for their mandatory medical meeting with Professor Hojo the next morning.

Letters sent off with Joan, he drained his coffee and stood. Stretching his arms over his head, he let out a squeak when a knot in his back twisted and seized up.

"Shit."

He needed to relax, or his body was just going to walk away from him and find another person who would treat it better. The late nights at the office and constant worrying about the Mako in the water and everything else on his plate were taking their toll.

Sitting back, he tried to remember what he normally did to relax. He could visit the cadet training centers and try not the laugh at the teenagers getting screamed at by their instructors; that one always put a smirk on his face. Or he could order Wutain food-

No. that one was out. It had been Genesis' favorite, and his mind conjured a memory of his icy eyes peering over his white cardboard carton even as he thought about ordering it. He had no desire to top off a terrible day with memories he would rather stayed buried until the end of time.

Unbidden, Zack's suggestion rose to the front of his mind and struck a pose. Could he really? Could he dare to go out and find some way of getting laid the same day he sentenced three of his precious men to what could be a horrible fate that paled in the face of death?

His back throbbed, his temples pounded, and his fists clenched. Yeah, he could. His body would revolt if he waited much longer, anyway.

When he clocked out at the end of the day, four hours after everyone else on his floor with the exception of Crazy Carl, who he was positive, ate the ink in the copier cartridges, he wasn't headed home. Instead, he went into the nearest public search cubicle and looked up on-call prostitutes that were willing to go into the Shinra compound.

Unsurprisingly, there weren't a lot. He finally found a brothel in the lower plate that sent their prostitutes to the Upper Plate to private residences, no matter where, for double the price you would pay to visit them on location.

Feeling suspicious at how easy it looked, he checked the introduction to the website and sighed when he saw that all of their prostitutes were guys. He could handle it though. Right now he wasn't in a picky mood when it came to gender.

His clicked on the profiles section and scrolled down for the newer ones. He wasn't in the mood for someone experienced- they often had a very cold-fish looked behind their eyes that gave him the willies. Or at least that was what the experienced prostitutes had been like in Wutai five years ago, which was the last time he'd gotten laid.

There was a man who'd just been added that afternoon. He pulled up the picture, which was obviously a temporary photo. Instead of a glamour shot like the other boys, this one was just a snap-shot with the man, Satin, looking startled.

He wasn't offensive looking, so he sent in his request for him to be sent to his address at twelve o'clock and kept all night. It was Friday: he could stay up late, or early, tonight.

000

"Harry!"

He poked his head out of the shower and frowned, "Where's the fire?"

Ian bounced in place, looking rumpled with his hair wet and a bottle of lotion in the hand not occupied with a print-out, "Guess who just got ordered by two different guys!"

"Um…you?"

"No!" Ian laughed, showing him the sheet, which turned out to be his profile from the brothel's website, "_You do. _Two guys from Shinra, separate, requested you tonight. The first one wants you from eight to eleven, and the other one wants you from midnight until ten the next morning. Harry, I don't know what you're doing right, but you are going to be one rich son of a bitch even after the brothel takes their cut."

"Well, someone else can be a rich bastard. Tell them I'm not available." He snapped the curtain closed, leaving a confused Ian on the other side. Ian pulled back the curtain, scattering water droplets.

"What are you talking about? You haven't been here a day, and you're already raking in the bigwigs. What's wrong?"

Harry glared and indicated his behind, "_This _is what's wrong. My ass really hurts right now, and I'm not in the mood to make it worse."

Ian groaned and leaned his forehead against the tiled wall beside the shower, "Why didn't you say something? You've been done for half an hour already. I could have gotten you some pain killers ages ago!"

"Oh," Harry looked embarrassed, "sorry, I just didn't think that you would have them for this sort of thing. I'd like a lot, thanks."

Ian rolled his eyes and laid the sheet down on a dry spot on the counter, "I'll be right back. That sheet will tell you anything I missed. Be ready in fifteen minutes, with an overnight bag. We've got a chauffeur who'll escort you to the Upper Plate and show you where to go so you don't get lost."

Harry nodded to show he'd heard and turned off the shower. Now that the prospect of a pain-free bottom was in view, he became a lot happier about getting two new prospects so soon. Looking at the sheet as he dried his hair, he saw that both customers were marked 'executive', whatever that meant.

000

End chapter 7


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Holy-! This story doesn't even have ten chapters yet, and it already has over a 100 reviews! Thanks so much you guys!

I don't know when Reno first became a Turk, so bear with me if I got my story wrong.

CHAPTER 8

His bodyguard didn't speak much. Harry didn't even catch his name before they arrived on the Upper Plate and he stopped thinking. He hadn't seen the sky, even this hazy version of it, for so long that it shocked him. He was handed a set of street directions and passwords to get inside the Shinra complex itself, where an aide was supposed to verify his identity. His bodyguard disappeared as suddenly as he'd been introduced.

Alone again, Harry navigated the streets while taking little sips of the sky whenever he could afford to look up. He caught the shimmering hint of moon-shine glowing through the pollution, and was reminded of Remus and his transformations. He would be going through a transformation of his own tonight. He'd never been promiscuous, or even flirtatious, and the sudden career change was unsteadying for him. He could handle it, though. He could handle anything, as long as there was something. Boredom was the only enemy he feared.

The building loomed ahead of him, and he felt a few butterflies of nervousness through what he could feel of his stomach. His whole body was comfortably numb thanks to the painkillers, and he felt just a little dizzy.

He made it into the building, flashed his I.D., and got sent into an elevator. While inside, he took out the address for his second appointment out of his pocket and noted the short distance between the two. That left him with almost an hour to find a bathroom to freshen up in and maybe get something to eat.

His stomach grumbled, and he wondered if it was going to do that at an inconvenient moment. Shrugging it off, he stepped out of the elevator and tracked down the room. He knocked.

The door swung open on a chain, and one gray eye sized him up.

"Are you the escort?"

Harry nodded, "Yep, that's me. Are you…" he consulted his sheet, "Reno?"

The door opened all the way, and Reno flashed his teeth, "Damn straight I am. Come on in, sugar."

"Thanks!" Harry smiled and walked around him. The apartment wasn't very big, but it was clean except for the array of take-out boxes scattered across the coffee table and the dirty dishes in the kitchenette, "So…"

Reno grinned and gestured to the food on the coffee table, "Are you hungry? I don't how your place works, but I know that some don't feed you guys until after a job."

"Well, if you're offering, I'll have some of whatever you don't want."

Reno snorted and sat down on the couch, patting the seat beside him. Harry toed off his sneakers and crossed the floor, barefoot, to settle beside him. Reno handed him a carton of what he now guessed to be Wutain food, "If you don't mind spicy, you can have this."

"I don't mind it at all," Harry replied, taking the food and the nearest pair of chopsticks. He took several huge mouthfuls before he remembered that he was supposed to look sexy, not like some demented frat boy and slowed down. He glanced at Reno, and saw that he was watching him, looking amused and relieved.

"I'm glad I asked for you."

Harry blinked at the non sequitur. "What? Why?"

"Because of what you did just now, with the food. Most of the hookers I've met, and I've met a lot, are so fake. They have to be- it's like their job. But you…you just sat right on down and started eating like we we're buddies or something."

He smiled with his eyes, mouth occupied with his latest mouthful. Swallowing, he replied, "Thanks. I hope I don't get _too _fake."

"Nah, I think you're the honest type anyway. You're cute too."

Harry finished the carton and set it on the coffee table. He scooted closer, and reached up to pull gently on Reno's ponytail, "Is this your real color? It's gorgeous."

"Yeah, it runs in the family."

They were quiet for a moment, and Reno's hand snuck onto his thigh, squeezing through his gray trousers. Desperate to say something for reasons he didn't understand, he said, "Your sheet says that you're an executive. What do you do?"

Reno laughed, "Oh, that! I'm not actually an executive. I just stole my boss's credit card and decided to make a few purchases. He should know better than to leave things like that lying around," his hand skated higher, and he leaned in, pressing his nose to the nape of his neck, "but enough about me. Wow, you even smell like peaches."

Harry wanted to squirm but suppressed it. He didn't know how to react but smiled anyway, running his fingers through Reno's ponytail, removing the tie that held it together. Reno sighed and placed his other hand against Harry's hip, cupping it and tracing the bumps that his veins made with his thumb.

The hand formerly molesting his thigh moved to his chest and pushed him back against the arm of the couch, half-reclined. Reno climbed on top of him and tugged at the bottom of his shirt. Understanding what he was getting at, Harry pulled his shirt over his head and unbuttoned his pants.

Wriggling out of their clothes except for their underwear, they waited a beat, just looking at each other. Reno bent his head and kissed him.

000

"I am _definitely _going to give you some good comments."

Harry looked up from his shoes, which he was lacing, "Oh, cheers! I could use some endorsements."

Reno shrugged, "Hey, you've got a lot of potential. You're naturally hot and you're a fast learner. I can't see how you'd be anything less than successful in your line of work. Hell, the only other job that I think you might be better at with some practice is mine."

"What do you do? I know you're not an executive, not that that eliminates much," Harry straightened, running a hand through his hair. It was damp with sweat, and his skin was starting to pull tight where the sweat was drying. His temples stung.

"I'm a TURK. We've got a bad reputation, but we're really not that bad. We're just special bodyguards who have to do paperwork on the side."

Harry nodded, "Sounds nice. A little bit of both…action and time behind a desk. I had a job like that once, but there just wasn't enough action. I like excitement. My attention span isn't so good, and I'm not very nice when I get bored."

Reno sized him up lecherously, "You certainly seem excitable enough."

"Ha! Thanks for that," Harry laughed, and kissed his cheek, "I gotta go. Ask for me again, alright? I'd like to see a familiar face sometime."

"For sure."

The door shut quietly behind him, and he made a beeline for the elevator. Once inside, he leaned against the side and sighed, trying to remember if he'd seen a public restroom in the lobby. He was pretty sure that there had one, so he pressed the button for the ground floor.

The receptionist sneered subtly at him but pointed out the restroom when he asked. Once inside, he went over to the sinks and splashed his face with water, rubbing it into his hairline where it was especially sticky. He opened his eyes and met his own in the reflection.

"I look like shit."

He smelled the hand soap experimentally, and then squirted some into his palms. He craned his neck at a highly uncomfortable angle and wet his hair before rubbing the soap into it.

Washing his hair in the sink put several kinks into his neck, so he spent several minutes trying to work them out while crouched beneath one of the automatic hand dryers. He shivered from the water that streaked under the collar of his shirt and down his back, reaching up for some paper towels to dab at the ends.

Finally groomed and feeling far less sticky thanks to the equivalent of a sponge bath he gave himself in one of the stalls, he checked the time. He still had, unbelievably, thirty minutes to kill.

He went to the elevator anyway.

000

End chapter 8

It's been so long, and this is only a partial update, but hey…it's something. Unfortunately, this is all I can give you guys.


	9. Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

It was half an hour before his escort would arrive, and he was antsy. He knew that he had no reason to be, but his body wouldn't still. It propelled him around his apartment, forcing him to pace in between bouts of paperwork he'd taken home. Finally it propelled him out the door.

If anyone asked, he would tell them that he was aiming for the soda machine on the fifth floor. Unlike the newer soda machines on the other floors, this one could be manipulated through force. By smacking it in various places in a certain order, you could obtain a soda for free. He wasn't hurting for money, but one of the reasons he wasn't was because he was a secret bargain-monger. He never paid for something if he didn't have to.

He did a few rounds through the twisting halls of the executive floor before entering the nearest elevator and pushing the button for the fifth floor.

000

Harry spun around just before entering the elevator and raised his hand to catch the receptionist's attention. She didn't look at him with nearly as much disapproval this time, and he smiled inwardly, pleased that he didn't look as much a mess as he thought he did.

"Excuse me miss, but where can I get something sugary to drink?"

"What, like a soda?"

He nodded.

"There's a good machine on the fifth floor, directly down the first hall from where you step out of the elevator."

"Cheers," he nodded to her and went into the unused elevator. Punching the button for the fifth floor, he ran a hand through his hair and checked himself out in the mirrored walls of the elevator. Not bad indeed. Instead of looking like a wet cat, he now looked almost rakish. He should've left the hair gel out from the start like he'd wanted to; he never looked good when he made any artificial effort.

Stepping out, he followed the directions and found the soda machine.

Behind him, he heard the sound of the elevator disgorging someone new and tensed. He hoped he wouldn't have to explain his presence to some nosy prat. He was humiliated enough, thank you very much.

He dug into his pocket for some money for a soda, but the person from the elevator came up behind him, reached over his shoulder, and pounded out some kind of bizarre pattern on the machine. The hand then jiggled the button for a generic soda, and the machine clanked, releasing the selected beverage.

Harry's mouth fell open and he turned to gape at the stranger. He would've shut his mouth sooner if he hadn't gotten an eyeful of what he was pretty sure had to be an angel of some kind. No human being could be that…could be so…words failed him. The dim lighting probably didn't do much to accentuate his own looks, but this man (was it a man?) looked positively breathtaking.

The stranger raised an eyebrow, and then politely asked if he would like a soda as well. Not comprehending the question, Harry just nodded.

The pounding was repeated, and he was asked which kind he wanted.

"Oh…whatever you're having."

He was handed the soda, and the he held his breath to see whether or not the stranger would leave now. He didn't, leaning against the side of the machine instead. Harry smiled nervously, and told the irritating voice inside him insisting that he was a prostitute and that this was against the rules somehow to shut up.

"What do you do here?"

He jumped, and coughed to try and cover it. "Oh, I'm…uh…I'm meeting somebody."

"I see."

They lapsed into silence, and Harry leaned against the machine as well. It vibrated gently, and reflected a square pinkish blob onto the opposing wall that was soothing to look at. He opened his soda and took a drink, smiling as the bubbles reminded him of butterbeer. He would kill for a butterbeer right now.

"Who are you meeting?"

Harry flushed, "I don't know their name. They used a code for security."

"Are you an informant?"

It was asked so causally that Harry almost answered honestly, but then he smirked and replied, "If I told you that I'd have to kill you."

The stranger snorted some soda out of their nose, shattering the untouchable image. Harry was relieved, and snuck a look at him from behind his lashes. He was beginning to realize that this was the first time he'd ever felt all fluttery and nervous around a man. It'd been different with Reno and his first customer; they'd just been guys that he happened to sleep with. But now he felt like his tongue was wringing itself of any moisture it might've had, and his left leg was starting to vibrate with nervous energy.

He tried to relax, focusing on the pink blob. He glanced at the clock and saw that it was ten minutes until he had to meet his third customer of the night.

"Clever. You've got guts."

"I hear that a lot."

"Well, I'm meeting someone as well, so I will be seeing you…?"

Harry shook his head. If this guy had a job here, the only chance he had of meeting him again would be if he was requested, "That isn't likely, but you can have my mobile if you want."

He frowned, "I'm sorry?"

Flushing, he realized that they probably didn't have that expression here. He pulled out his phone, or whatever they called it, and waved it, "My mobile communication number. Sorry, it's something we say where I'm from."

"Ah."

They exchanged numbers, and Harry privately wondered how he was going to incorporate this into his daily life. This man couldn't possibly know what he did, or he never would've initiated this with him.

As one, they headed for the elevator. Harry flushed when he pressed the same button as his companion. Shit.

"So…what do _you _do here?"

"I command an army."

Harry nodded, feeling numb. He'd just started a flirtation with a _military General. _Granted, all the generals he'd ever seen on television before were grumpy old men in highly decorated uniforms. The images of them and the silver-haired sylph beside him wouldn't fit. He replied, "I've done some work in that field but it's not really, you know, my thing."

"And what is your 'thing'?"

He opened his mouth to lie, and the truth came out instead, "Having sex with strangers, apparently. It's very lucrative."

The elevator doors opened before the General could reply, and Harry turned, nodded to him, and swept off in the direction he gauged to be correct, judging from the numbers on the doors.

After a few seconds, he realized that the General was following him.

Well, wasn't this awkward?

He stopped at the correct door, reached into his pocket and double-checked, and then knocked. The General stepped around him and slotted his keycard into the door, pressed his thumb against something, and then typed something out super fast into a keypad.

It wasn't making sense to Harry. His mind refused to put the pieces together.

The General pushed the door open and stood aside, gesturing him in with a very amused look in his eyes. Harry was struck by how nice he looked when he looked like he was making fun of him in his head.

He meekly stepped inside and toed his shoes off.

"You are a much unexpected sort of person."

Harry scratched his cheek, not knowing how else to respond, "In a good way or a bad way?"

"Oh, in a very good way," the General stepped around him and dumped his empty soda can in the trash, "Come this way."

He followed him, taking a sip of his flat soda. It was only going to dehydrate him, but the painkillers, long day, and late night were all making him sleepy and he needed the sugar rush. He was going to be here until the next morning, and he doubted he was going to get much rest if the hinted muscles he could see were any indication.

"Sit."

He sat, and watched him remove his coat and boots, neatly stowing them in a closet. Ah, the organized type. He supposed that he should've expected it, if the man commanded an army. Sloppiness gets people killed.

"You may undress."

He set aside his soda and undid the buttons of his jacket, then the zip. He folded it before setting it on the floor, and did the same with his shirt and socks. The bed dipped, and the General touched the firm spot behind his ear with his fingertips. He dimly remembered that he had a scar there, in the shape of a capital letter 'D'.

"This looks like it was painful."

"It was."

He didn't dare move as the fingers, long and deceptively slender if the sword propped against the corner of the room was to be believed, slid back through his hair. They tangled in the wisps as the nape of his neck.

"You have a very nicely shaped skull, and nice face. Did you get your bone structure from your mother or your father?"

Harry shrugged, "I don't know. I never got a chance to see in person, and I didn't look to closely at the photographs I got."

"Explain."

"There isn't much to explain; I was orphaned as an infant."

"What a coincidence. I have never met my parents either."

He looked over at him, softening a little. This man might be the type to buy prostitutes, but no one can lose their original parents without receiving an emotional wound that never truly heals. The loss of one's first loves isn't something the heart is capable of forgetting, even if it cannot articulate itself. He covered his inactive hand with his own.

"I'm sorry to hear that. It blows, doesn't it?"

000

End chapter 9

Ha! This one was almost proper length.


	10. Chapter 10

NOTE: I am going out of town 12/9/09 and won't be back until possibly early January. I won't have regular internet access while I'm away, which means that all of my projects will be suspended until I return.

CHAPTER 10

Sephiroth nodded, not taking his eyes off of Harry's mouth. Ever since learning that the human mouth was one of the most germ-infested sections of the human body, he'd had an aversion to kissing. All of the prostitutes he'd been with previously hadn't seemed to care one way or the other, so he drew the conclusion that not kissing was acceptable behavior.

But he didn't want that distance tonight. Unfortunately, he wasn't sure how to initiate one. How did you go about giving a kiss? He'd seen his SOLDIERS do it to their friends when they were very excited or happy to be alive, but he'd never seen in done romantically.

Maybe he should've talked to Zack about this first.

Leaning forward cautiously, he felt his PHS dig into his thigh. What was wrong with him? He could just call Zack now! He straightened.

"Excuse me; I need to make a quick call. I just remembered something."

Satin waved a hand with an easy-going smile, "Sure. I'll be right here when you get back."

He got up and went into the bathroom, pulling out his phone. He dialed Zack and leaned impatiently against the sink. While he waited for him to pick up, he smoothed his hair and checked his teeth in the mirror. He was clean. He looked like he always did. A frown hovered over his forehead. Should he look like he always did? This wasn't something that he would normally do.

"Hello? Zack Fair speaking," Zack answered, his voice crackling through the receiver with as much exuberance as he managed in person.

"Lieutenant Fair, this is your General."

He heard a gasp, and raised his eyebrows. He could hear the boom of loud music and laughter during the silence. Oh no. Zack hadn't….A drunken woman's voice very close to the PHS demanding why he'd stopped dancing with her affirmed his suspicions.

He took a deep breath, "Lieutenant, where are you?"

"Oh, fuck! I mean… Uh…I'm in my apartment, sir."

Sephiroth rubbed his temples. Zack had never been sent on a collaborative mission with the Turks like the rest of his troops because he was, quite possibly, the worst liar on the face of the planet, "Officer, I am positive that you are not, as you say, in your apartment. I command you to return within the next hour. I will call in exactly one hour, and if you do not pick up your telephone from inside and affirm your identity, I will deploy you to the smallest town on this planet to chop wood with the locals."

"Yes, sir," there was genuine contrition in his voice, and Sephiroth sighed.

"Good. Until later, then," he hung up and set an alarm on his phone to remind him when his time was up.

He remembered why he'd called him in the first place just as he was about to leave the bathroom and groaned. He'd have to figure this out on his own. He was a genius, right? There had to be some kind of strategy to this.

Meanwhile, Harry got bored sitting on the bed and got up to look at his surroundings. There wasn't an article out of place in the closet when he peeked inside. Even the boots were upright, their buckles gleaming in the faint light. He smiled, feeling almost fond. There was something about him that reminded him a little bit of Percy Weasley. Heaven knows that nobody could top that level of anal neatness.

He caught sight of the sword again and wandered over to inspect it. It was as different from Godric Gryffindor's gaudy blade as possible. While Godric's had been chunky and unwieldy, this one looked like it could slice through the air itself. He ran the tip of his finger down the black-wrapped hilt and tapped the silver wrist guard. It certainly wasn't flimsy, paper-thin blade or not.

He heard the bathroom door open suddenly and leapt back guiltily. Sephiroth looked at him, then at the sword.

"It's alright; you can look at it if you like. Just be careful- it's very sharp."

"Cheers," Harry leaned close to get a look at the Wutain characters molded into the silver guard, wondering what they said. He wasn't going to ask. After a few moments, he came back to him and sat down beside him on the bed. A second later he laid his hand on his arm and looked up at him through his lashes. He'd already been here for over half an hour and they hadn't even kissed yet.

Sephiroth didn't seem to take the hint.

Oh. Maybe he was one of those guys who lacked initiative, and he wanted Harry to lead things. He could live with that. Sliding his hand upwards, he cupped his shoulder and leaned up to kiss his jaw. Sephiroth took a breath, but didn't pull away.

It was worse than he'd thought. He moved his mouth an inch closer to his mouth and kissed again. He worked his way slowly along his jaw and up his chin. He breathed on his lips, giving him a moment to move in case he wanted to take charge.

Sephiroth didn't move, although he did feel his fingers twitch against his leg where they were pressed together. Gently, he pressed their lips together. When there wasn't an immediate response, he got nervous and started to pull away. Sephiroth made a noise in the back of his throat and pulled him back against him.

He slipped his hand up further and draped it around his neck, using a sigh to part his lips. Sephiroth caught this hint, and his tongue darted out to flick against his lower lip before retreating. Harry coaxed him into some bolder kissing, although he still had to lead the operation. Shy or not, he wasn't sure he minded leading anymore. Sephiroth tasted sharp and coppery, just a little bit like blood.

Removing his arm from around his neck, he pushed on his chest until Sephiroth yielded and relaxed back against the bed. It was an expensive mattress, he could tell, by the way it seemed to swallow them. The coverlet smelled like lavender.

"Is this too fast?"

Sephiroth shook his head, shyly putting his hands on Harry's hips and pulling so that Harry lay fully on top of him. Harry smiled and dipped back down, catching his chin with his teeth. He sucked gently, and then opened his mouth a centimeter, waiting. Sephiroth licked the corner of his mouth and then tilted his head to nuzzle his cheek with his nose.

Harry felt inordinately pleased with himself for getting him to progress to this point. He felt a hand slide down his back to cup his backside. He squeezed and Harry yelped. The hand withdrew, but he grabbed it and returned it to his place.

"Sorry, I liked it. You just startled me."

Sephiroth's mouth quirked upwards and he raised himself on one elbow, his free hand moving down to the back of his leg and massaging it through his thin trousers. Harry felt his face flush as his blood started circulating downwards.

"Is _this _too fast?" Sephiroth teased, raising an eyebrow. Harry was surprised; he hadn't known that the general was the teasing type. In retaliation, he rolled his hips, bracing his hands on either side of his head, careful not to pull on his long silver hair.

"Not at all; I like it bold."

Sephiroth danced his fingers up his inseam, brushing the place where the four seams met and then pressing a finger tight against it. It pushed against the thin place of skin behind his balls, and Harry gasped, pushing his hips backwards. This was an interesting development. It would seem that the General was not as inexperienced as he'd thought. The fingers moved back, knuckles pushing against the seam bisecting his seat. The fingers looped through his belt loop and tugged them down an inch. They snuck beneath his waistband, tracing along the patch of skin between his dimples.

Harry got impatient and got onto his knees so that he could unzip his jeans. He was more aroused than he thought he was, and Sephiroth actually smiled triumphantly when Harry started shimmying out of his jeans. He reached up and helped him remove his shirt.

Once his clothes were out of the way, he was tugged suddenly against him and found a warm mouth eager to explore his neck and clavicle. He sighed and closed his eyes, trying not to remember that Ginny used to play with his collarbone. Sephiroth buried his face in his neck and bit his neck. Harry sighed and gripped his hair, running his fingers through the silky strands. It was so smooth, it felt like water.

His hands roved down again and one hand crept between his cheeks. Harry twitched and opened his mouth to ask about lubrication when he heard something plastic being unscrewed. The General sure knew how to plan things out.

Sephiroth leaned forward, and his weight forced Harry back. He took a few deep breaths to relax as he felt the finger start to probe him, slick with what smelled remarkably like Vaseline.

He jolted when he felt Sephiroth's palm rub along the length of his erection, and his hips surged upwards by themselves. He groaned, and felt Sephiroth's teeth against his neck as he smiled. A second finger slipped inside, and he heard the General's breath catch when he tightened around it playfully.

"Been a while?"

Sephiroth didn't reply but bent his fingers as he added a third, pressing tightly against his prostate.

"Shit!"

He heard a snort and retaliated by pressing his hips up and against him, catching the head of his erection against his hip. Sephiroth groaned and squeezed his hip with the hand not inside him, pulling him close. His fingers started to thrust in time with his hips, pressing Harry against the mattress with his bulk. His breaths puffed hotly against his neck, and Harry felt something wet come out of the tip and slide down his hip.

The fingers withdrew. The hand gripped the coverlet beside his head and the hand on his hips tilted his hips up. He supported himself on his elbows and let himself be angled. The head brushed against his cleft, and then slid slowly along his balls. He tried to catch his breath, but the hand on his hip tightened. He was penetrated swiftly, and his back arched as his body tried to accommodate him.

"Just breathe…" Sephiroth whispered, removing his face from his neck, face flushed and lips parted, "Let me know if I hurt you. I don't know my own strength."

Harry nodded shakily, glancing at the large biceps inches from his left cheek.

"Don't worry about me. Just get on with it."

Sephiroth snorted and Harry almost stuck out his tongue. The hips slid upwards, and he heard him choke as he slid in until their hips couldn't get any tighter. He was completely sheathed, and Harry heard him breathing hard as he tried to restrain himself. It had to be maddening, being that close to ecstasy and having to pause to give the other time to get used to it.

Harry's hands found their way to his shoulders, and he held on tight as Sephiroth withdrew slowly, easing out of him inch by agonizing inch. He waited impatiently, thoughts whirling without order. He tried to think straight, but whenever Sephiroth exhaled his ridged stomach brushed the head of his erection and pressed down slightly.

Sephiroth moved forward, and he slid between his abdominal muscles just as his prostate was brushed again.

"Fuck," it sounded more like a whimper than a moan, and he bent his legs tighter to his body, wanting to bring him closer.

He withdrew completely and then surged forward, hard. He yelled, and Sephiroth let out a strangled cry, bending low, silver hair sliding over his shoulders to collect against Harry's damp chest. His hand cupped his hip at a better angle and he drove in again several times, shifting upwards onto his knees while placing the pressure on his toes. He seized Harry's other hip and held him steady as he started to buck, thrusting down hard.

Harry held onto the sheets with both hands, desperately trying not to scream. It felt incredible, and Sephiroth slammed into his prostate powerfully with every thrust. He felt his body let go, and he came harder than he thought possible. His bones felt like they were melting, and his insides turned into a boiling tangle of nerves. He felt heavy and over-sensitized, almost high as he tried to regain coherent thought.

Sephiroth shifted his grip and bent his head to suck his chest, placing open-mouthed kisses along his pectorals as he thrust faster and smoother. Harry groaned, not wanting the slick sensation of their skin sliding together to end. It hurt a little now from the force of his hips, but he didn't speak up. The expression on Sephiroth's face was unbelievable. His lips were wet, and sweat dripped down his temples.

His thrusts sped up, and Harry tightened around him, locking his ankles against his lower back. His head thrashed from side to side as his over-sensitized body became aroused again. Sephiroth noticed and closed his fist around him, the uneven grip on his hips causing him to jab more sharply at his prostate. He moaned, gripping him tighter and sliding down every time he drove inside, and up every time he withdrew.

"Ah…" Harry was too weak to say anything else, and he could only whimper when he came again, feeling like he was slowly burning to death from the inside out. Sephiroth whispered something, a jagged sound coming out of his throat just as he jerked upwards unexpectedly. His eyes were clenched tight, and his white teeth bit through his lip as he came.

Harry felt his seed pool out of him, oozing in thin rivulets as Sephiroth pulled out. He rolled off of him, nestling his head into the sheets beside Harry's neck. Harry smoothed a hand through his hair.

They were quiet for some time, during which they breathed deeply and Harry stroked his hair and ears. Finally, Sephiroth whispered, "Do you want to do it again?"

In between bouts of sex, they ate noodles and Sephiroth answered Harry's questions about tactics. He couldn't think of anything to ask Satin, but he didn't seem to mind. They fell asleep when it was almost five in the morning, Satin's smooth legs tangled with his own in a confused jumble beneath the sheets. They'd flung the coverlet to the ground hours before.

When he awoke, Satin was still sleeping. He murmured in his sleep, but didn't wake as he left to bathe. His body felt stiff and sticky with their shared fluids. Just as he was preparing to wash, he realized that their time was almost over and that Satin might wake before he finished grooming.

He laid out the money on the nightstand where he knew Satin would see it and went to the shower.

His hair was filled with shampoo foam when he heard the door open and close with a 'click'. Satin had left. He finished cleaning himself and then toweled off in the bathroom so he wouldn't get his carpet wet. Exiting the bathroom, he surveyed the bedroom while toweling his hair. The coverlet was draped dramatically across the floor, one of the nightstands was on its side, and his closet door looked battered. Perhaps he could've afforded to be less creative with their sex positions.

A wave of loneliness washed over him, and he longed to see Satin curled up again on his side of the bed.

He dropped the towel and laid down face-first on the bed. Grabbing the pillow Harry had used, he pulled it close and smelled deeply. He sighed, catching the scent of cologne, the ever-present thick smell of the city, and noodles.

Sitting back up, he retrieved his towel and finished grooming. He had a gym waiting for him, and some projects that he didn't want to postpone until Monday. He couldn't afford to spend his time daydreaming about prostitutes or wondering if they were available for next weekend.

000

End chapter 10


	11. Chapter 11

A/N: I'm home!

CHAPTER 11

Venus looked up from the newspaper and smirked at him when he entered his apartment. He no longer questioned her sometimes inexplicable presence in his apartment. He knew that sometimes she couldn't go back to her own apartment for reasons he would rather not know.

"Well, well, well. You look like you had a very satisfying all-nighter. Who was it with?"

"It's not what you think. It was a customer," he tried to will the happy flush out of his cheeks, but knew that it wasn't working. He concentrated on eating everything in sight instead. He'd never been hungrier in his life.

Her eyebrows went up but she didn't say anything else. After a few moments of him munching, he asked her how she was.

"I'm pretty good. Business has been steady and uneventful lately. I'm sure you'll be interested in knowing that there's been some stirring up lately in the crime lord scene. Apparently they're collaborating on some kind of project that involves scientists. The minion who confided in me seemed a little freaked out by the science part; he thinks they're making bio-weapons or something."

He looked up, interested, "Really? That's odd. But it's good that they have a project. Projects make one want to relax at the end of the day, and that will get me into more contact with them."

She nodded, "I didn't think of that, but you're right. I've always noticed a surge in business whenever there's something fishy going on."

He took a sip of water, "I made a shitload of money the past couple of days. Any idea about what I should do with it?"

Venus put away the compact she was touching up her face with, "Well, that depends on what kind of spending you had in mind. You could go to the Upper Plate and buy some new clothes, or you could buy a car, or…?"

"No, I don't mean frivolous spending. Is there some kind of, I don't know, charity out there that helps people that isn't corrupt?"

She laughed, "Ha! As if. Not in this town. Didn't I tell you that there isn't a scrap of human decency left here?"

He set his jaw, feeling familiar fire burn through his veins, "Then I'll make some. Venus, how do you feel about helping me start a program for…" he thought for a moment, "teen mothers. I see a lot of them around, and they don't need to be on the streets."

Venus looked around his apartment, "You're rich, you live _here, _but you're going to give your cash to kids stupid enough to get knocked up? I don't understand your thought process."

"Charity, that's the process. I'm not the kind of guy who cares too much for his living conditions, but I _do _care about having more than other people and also the means to give them a leg to stand on. Come on, haven't you ever given to the poor or helped a stranger?"

She shifted around on the bed a little guiltily, "No."

Harry choked on his cereal, "What? Never?"

"Never; I never had anything to give, and even when I did I couldn't understand why these people didn't fight harder for themselves?"

He groaned, "And did you ever think about the fact that people are different? Different people have different skills, and that means that not everybody knows how to survive on their own without getting eaten alive by the system. Venus, there are _little girls _out there with little girls of their own who don't have to be miserable," he examined her face, pleased with the thoughtfulness and first glimmers of compassion distorting her features, "Now, do you want to help me?"

She shrugged an indolent shoulder, but her tone betrayed her body language, "Damn it, fine! What do you want me to do?"

"Instead of lazing around here all day doing nothing like I know you were planning, you're going to come with me and help me find a large building with heating and running water," he stood and put away the food. That finished, he sat beside her on the bed and squeezed her leg, "We'll leave after I sleep for a couple of hours. I'm still exhausted from last night."

Venus rolled over to give him more room and giggled a little, "I'll bet you're _very _tired and sore."

"Shut up," he gruffly grabbed the blankets and wrapped himself in them, fully dressed. She watched his back, smiling, listening to his breath evening out and softening into sleep. He was one crazy kid that was for sure. Nobody had been able to stir her much-buried softer side in years, but he'd worked his way into her heart in under a week.

She bent over him and lightly scratched her nails through his scruffy hair. He didn't look very threatening right now, but he had a different kind of danger to him than the thugs she was used to facing. He had a heart, and in a place like Midgar, that could either get him killed or loved.

Outside, the artificial lights continued to flash off and on the same as always, coloring the walls purple, green, red, and yellow. She relaxed into the mattress and threw one arm over Harry to give her shoulders more room. It was almost peaceful here, even with the sounds of the neighbors moving around overhead and on the other side of the wall. Sirens wailed outside, and she idly wondered why SOLDIERS even bothered to enforce the law down here at all. They came so seldom, and were so obviously uninformed that it would be hard to take them seriously at all if their bizarre super-human strength wasn't evident in their eyes.

She would help Harry, crazy as it was. He was right. Midgar _did _need decency dragged back into it. She just hoped that it didn't get him killed, because she didn't know if she could take that after she'd started liking him so much.

Water trickled through the pipes, and the sound lulled her to sleep.

000

It took some time, and they got some leers when Harry described his preference that there be a multitude of rooms and bathrooms in the building, but they finally found an old candle factory that had rather obviously gone out of business. Apparently they thought he was trying to start a brothel, and he was forced to accept fliers and sometimes even the property owner's female relative's numbers.

He looked around the factory, hands on hips. They machines had long ago been either re-sold or looted for their scrap metal, so what was left was a large three-story rectangular building. It had functioning electricity and water, and very little pre-existing wiring which meant that it would be easier to wire the place for more personal electrical outlets and put in piping for the bathrooms he would have to build.

Now all they had to do was find an architect not too stuck up to convert the factory into a massive dormitory for young women and their many children. Since people in the Lower Plate built their own homes or used structures that were built when the Plate was first created, the only architects were on the Upper Plate, and even then they weren't plentiful. There simply wasn't much need for them in the city.

Venus sneezed and dug a tissue out of her bra to blow her nose. When she was done, she commented, "It's dusty in here."

"Yep," he rubbed the back of his neck and headed out, nodding to the security personnel. Property owners who didn't want their facilities mutilated or populated by the homeless hired large men with earpieces and lumpy overcoats to protect their property. Since Harry owned the factory now, he would be in charge of paying them.

They celebrated completing the first step in their project with a lunch on the Upper Plate in a trendy restaurant. Harry realized half-way through his steak that he was looking around for a glimpse of the General. He mentally slapped himself and tried to remind his stubborn hope that it was ridiculous to expect to find the General in this particular restaurant in the middle of the work day. He was a busy man, and surely wouldn't be just walking around in plain sight.

He looked longingly out the window at the Shinra building.

Venus cleared her throat, and he quickly looked over at her. She shook her head at him.

"What's on your mind? You haven't stopped looking around since we got up here."

"Nothing," he mumbled.

"Yeah right, nothing. Confess."

He ignored her and took a bite of his asparagus. He loved asparagus, even though the stringy parts sometimes got stuck in his teeth. Someone walked past the window, and he choked on it. No way. It couldn't be…but it could be. He'd know that back anywhere after how much he'd seen of it the night before. The door opened, and he could hear the drawling voice requesting a table for two.

The only empty table was beside the one he was sharing with Venus. She was looking at him curiously, noticing the set of his shoulders and his mixed emotions.

"Are you okay, Harry?"

He nodded distractedly, seeing the flash of red hair out of the corner of his eye as the newcomer was seated. He couldn't resist temptation and glanced quickly over.

Reno was looking at him, and he grinned when he met Harry's eyes. He mouthed, 'how you doing?' He was sitting with a pale man who looked remarkably like Draco Malfoy, wearing a white three-piece suit. The Draco clone was studying the menu with almost frightening intensity and didn't seem to notice that Reno's attention was away.

Harry shyly mouthed back, 'I'm fine'. This was awkward. It was one thing to be a prostitute under the cover of darkness, but it was quite another thing to bump into customers in broad daylight (never mind that he'd just been fantasizing about meeting a certain silver-haired customer).

The Draco clone looked up and noticed their exchange. He looked at Harry with naked curiosity, but enough poise that made it clear that he was in a position to do so because he was powerful. Finally, he asked Reno, "Well, aren't you going to introduce me to your friend, you inbred?"

Reno chortled, "As luck would have it, this here is the very person responsible for me apologizing to you with lunch on my wallet at the most expensive restaurant in Midgar."

"This is the most expensive restaurant in Midgar?" Harry asked, half to Reno and half to Venus. She shrugged and squeezed her lemon wedge into her water.

"Damned if I know. I've never eaten up here."

Harry turned back to Reno as what he said sunk in, "Wait, is this your boss?"

Reno nodded, "Yep, and he found out about the little, ahem, purchase I made with his money and has me repenting for my sin with lunch on my dime. He didn't tell me that he was going to pick this restaurant of all restaurants in the city, though I should've expected that kind of douchbaggery-ow!"

His boss had kicked him under the table. A second later he was smirking at Harry with a vaguely predatory glitter in his eyes and teeth.

"Pleased to meet you; I've heard such _wonderful _things about you," he purred.

Harry flushed. Oh, this was just too much. He looked to Venus for support, but she just looked like she was trying not to laugh and therefore was no help whatsoever. He looked back at Reno's boss, and politely asked him his name to break the awkward silence.

"I'm Rufus Shinra."

Venus jerked around in her chair to stare openly at him, "Whoa, you're the president's son!"

"Yes," Rufus answered simply, "And you are?"

She blushed, stunning Harry. He didn't know that she could still do something so vulnerable.

They ended up squeezing their tables together and Rufus ruthlessly engaged Harry in conversation, drawing him out and eventually uncovering his recent plans to start a program for underage mothers.

"I think that's wonderful! The Lower Plate needs someone like you to give them hope," Rufus smoothly complimented him, taking a sip of wine, "Are you taking donations? Scratch that; whether you're taking them or not, I'm giving you one."

And just like that, Harry's funds were doubled. In addition, he left lunch with the phone number of the leading architect in Midgar.

Things were looking up.

000

End chapter 11


	12. Chapter 12

CHAPTER 12

Willkie Firth, on the shorter stocky side with a square jaw and a nose bent from an improperly healed break, is not a man you would pay a moment's attention to if you passed him on the street.

But you might not live very long if he didn't like the look of you as you walked past. Willkie was the real power house of Midgar, the real Big Boss. He scared the shit out of the President, though he was always meticulously polite to him during their 'business meetings', most of which consisted of Willkie expressing demands thinly sheathed as requests. A former cop, in the days before Shinra and the Upper Plate and SOLDIER, he knew the way the citizens of Midgar functioned and knew them well. Among those unfortunate enough to know him, he was believed to be borderline psychic because of his uncanny foreknowledge and tactical genius.

As a former cop, he still walked his beat every day, no matter the weather or occasion. To those with regular enough jobs to notice his steady walk every day, he was assumed to be one of the few merely semi-degenerate men in Midgar.

After Willkie was Allen, better known as Flashy, Fitzgerald; the two had been best friends for almost forty years now, and were as close as two sisters. Flashy worked ostensibly as a secretary for the research team that first discovered that Mako could be converted into a harness-able source of power, and now spent his days assisting the venerable Prof. Hojo. With thick spectacles, a tall lanky body, and a crop of bountiful gray hair that hung to his shoulders in a static whirl-wind, he was not easy to miss in a crowd.

These two men sat a long dark table in one of the private rooms of the Shinra building, close to the top where the President was cowering. Someone had leaked the arrival of the two most powerful mob bosses to him, and he'd promptly excused himself from all obligations and locked himself in his quarters.

Sephiroth had to listen to Zack laugh hysterically after seeing their portly leader waddling rapidly towards the elevator that morning.

"Would either of you gentlemen like anything to drink?" Reeve asked, a hint of nervousness coloring his words. He was not originally supposed to be present at the meeting, since he had moral issues with working with the mob, but Willkie demanded the presence of the man who'd brought the water situation to their attention. There was nothing to be done but obey, since no one wanted to start things out on a sour note.

"Just water is fine for me," Flashy answered, pushing his spectacles back up his nose when they started to slide down. He didn't look at Reeve, eyes remaining fixed on Sephiroth. Sephiroth did not react, calmly meeting and holding his gaze. He was used to people looking at him like this, like he was an exhibit or something preserved in a jar for scientific interest.

Willkie flapped a hand and continued twisting his pinky ring around his finger.

Looking at the two of them, they weren't very threatening and it was hard to believe that these were the men who really controlled Midgar. Behind them lurked the hulking mass of Bryan 'Puff' Bissinger, who was roughly the dimensions of a small mountain, with a shaved head and barely an inch of un-tattooed skin to his name. He was their confidante, and the man they looked to when they wanted something taken care of _personally. _

Reeve smiled tightly at Puff, so called because of the way his muscles puffed almost comically out of his shirt. Puff smiled back.

"So, let's get started, shall we?"

Willkie nodded, not saying a word. He hadn't spoken since he'd arrived and quietly greeted Sephiroth, who he'd met several times before during similar collaborative projects that involved the Lower Plate.

Reeve cleared his throat and opened the thick folder in front of him. He passed two stapled copies over to their guests, who accepted them and began flipping through them without much interest.

"As you can see from the statistics on the top sheet of the papers I've given you, the water now contains a dangerous level of various toxins, chiefly Mako, which have leaked into the system through the reinforced steel drums that we keep the water in while purifying it. Our water purifying system is directly next to our Mako refinery, and Mako has been known to behave in mysterious ways, the latest of which is to infect our water supply. Since, when taken in small doses, Mako is harmless, the technicians thought nothing of it for several months and believed it to be just a small amount that'd come through the water itself. It wasn't until two weeks ago that we discovered the rising levels of Mako, and its effects when gradually introduced to the unenhanced human bloodstream," he took a gulp of water, "Instead of exiting the blood stream normally like other toxins, Mako remains and integrates itself into the body's fat stores, vital organs, and moves down until it reaches the level of our DNA. Recent studies have showed us that the very texture of hair and fingerprints have been altered through exposure to Mako.

"As I'm sure you all know, when consumed in a large enough proportion, Mako becomes a poison. It kills 70% of the life forms that it comes into contact with within anywhere from two minutes to two years of reaching that level, which varies just slightly depending on the mass of the victim. The 30% that are not killed by it absorb the Mako into their genetic code and become what we've called 'enhanced'. This means improved strength and agility, and any other skill that can be taught to a body. However, if the mental state of the victim is not stable enough, it causes dangerous mood swings and outbursts of inexplicable energy that can prove deadly to both the victim and any around them who are struck by the attack.

"Obviously, this is a serious problem because not only are we faced with a drastic population drop that will depress our economy; we are also in danger of a full-out revolt when our enhanced soldiers and other specially trained officers who already have a steady exposure to Mako begin to lose their minds. Are there any questions?"

Willkie passed a sheet of paper across the table, and tapped the figure at the top, "This is when we can expect the effects to hit?"

"Yes, that is. It is set to hit us three months from now, provided there isn't a heat wave that causes our citizens to consume more water than usual."

Willkie nodded and retracted the paper, which he added to his stack. Allen leaned forward and straight-up asked, "What do you want from us? We don't want to see this happen anymore than you do, but we'd like to know what's expected of us before we decide if we can help you or not. We're men, not superheroes."

Reeve bobbed his head, "I know that, sir. I wasn't the one who plotted out what we're going to do about this, though. I just researched the status quo. Sephiroth?"

Sephiroth tore his eyes away from the window and said, "What we're dealing with here is a crisis with a ticking clock, and I want to know right away whether or not this was a terrorist act. I'd like you to have your Boys and Cats go through their contacts and find out if there's been anything suspicious about the water going around in conversation both lately and as far back as they can remember. I will compensate you for the costs of that kind of investigation. Will that be a problem?"

"No problem at all. If you'll excuse me, I'll call them up now and have them get started," Flashy excused himself, pulling out his PHS and going to stand by the far side of the window.

"What else?" Willkie asked, fighting a yawn. He was a man of the streets, not a business man. Flashy normally took care of things like this so he didn't have to come all the way up here, but this was an emergency.

"Just keep your finger on the pulse of the streets, and make sure that the Tobys are alright. I know that you aren't enhancing them, but those boys could cause a lot of damage if they lost their control," Sephiroth was referring to the specialized hit men that worked for Willkie, called Tobys after their leader Toby Swick. Toby and Willkie met over thirty years ago, when Willkie was working on getting a promotion and the key to it was catching Toby, who was an assassin at the time. When he finally did catch him, though, they got to talking and Willkie gave up his reputation and his promotion when he let Toby escape in order to gain his friendship.

"That sounds manageable. And since I've always liked working with you, Sephiroth, I'm sending a team of my researchers to you. Do with them what you will. I'm sure that they'd be ecstatic to help you figure out how to re-cleanse the water."

Sephiroth allowed a little smile to pull at the corners of his lips, "That's very friendly of you, Willkie."

Willkie smirked and stood, shaking hands with first Reeve and then the General, "I aim to please if it means that my pedestal remains untouched."

000

Sephiroth flopped onto his bed, exhausted. He'd done all of his normal duties, and then called the meeting with the Big Boss and Flashy on top of it. The meeting took almost three hours, and he was feeling more than a little scared to take a bath. He'd had a moment to take a coffee break mid-afternoon and come across Hojo's files on him, buried in the bottom drawer of his desk.

He was the last person who could afford an extra dose of Mako. Reaching over the side of the bed, he picked up the jug of imported water from Wutai and took a greedy gulp. It was paranoid, but he'd lived through a lot of shit from being paranoid.

Relaxing again, he tried to get his mind off of the escort he'd seen last weekend. He was just an escort, not some kind of…he didn't know. He lost the fight with himself and pulled out his PHS, flipping his thumbs across the buttons to open an internet window. He went to the site he'd used last time and scrolled down until he found Satin's profile.

There was a betting contest going on for the weekend, and his eyebrows went up. Since when did people bet on normal prostitutes? He entered in a ridiculously high price, and the other bidders hastily withdrew, sensing the shark in their midst.

His eyes zeroed in on the picture of him, and he tried to contain his excitement for the weekend.

000

End chapter 12


	13. Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

"Well, this is weird," Harry mused, looking around at the skeletons of rooms. His factory was being transformed before his eyes, and rapidly too. There was never a shortage of desperate people willing to do anything for a job, so the building was done at an accelerated rate. It helped that the design was simplistic and didn't require much fancy work.

"How so?" Francis asked. Francis Mosshart was the finest architect in Midgar, and in the world. He looked the part, too; standing nearly a head taller than everybody they encountered, he was hard to miss; he wore an impeccable example of good tailoring as a suit and very shiny shoes. If Harry wasn't so enamored with his mysterious silver-haired customer, he would've been tempted to flirt with this man.

Harry shrugged, "I don't know…I just never expected to see this realized so fast. I'm still surprising myself with what I can get done if I settle down to do it. It's amazing. Humanity is capable of so much, but we rarely fulfill our full destiny. Self-doubt is a poisonous worm that eats us up inside, and makes the foundations of our dream castles crash down."

Francis' lips twitched, and then he smiled, "Agreed,"

Harry flashed him a glance, and caught him watching him with a mystified look on his face. He frowned, "Is something wrong?"

"No, you just surprise me. When Rufus asked me to convert a factory for a prostitute in the Lower Plate into a dormitory for homeless young women, I thought he was joking. But now I understand why he was so taken with you," he looked back over the workers and the progress of the walls, "You have a rare quality of strength to you."

Harry felt shy, so he looked away. It would've looked rude, but he didn't care. He didn't understand what Francis meant. He wasn't strong; he was just a kid inside who didn't want anybody to be alone if they didn't have to be. He knew that he wouldn't stop at young mothers. There were so many people here that needed help, and he couldn't play favorites.

Maybe this was why the orb only worked for him, back on his own planet and in that office for the Unspeakables. Was he brought here to help these people? Even if he wasn't, he was going to help them even if it killed him.

His PHS buzzed, and he excused himself to answer.

"Hey there! You don't know me, and I don't know you, but news travels fast in this town and I wanted to know if you wanted some help getting the girls to move into your safe house when it's complete."

His eyes widened. Someone was volunteering to help? He'd have to shove this in Venus' face later just to make her mad. He cleared his throat and responded, "Who am I speaking to?"

"My name is Aerith Gainsborough, and I work as a flower girl a few blocks away from your candle factory. You're Satin, right?"

"Um, yes; did you want to meet in person? I'd like to know what people are saying about my project."

She laughed, and he couldn't help but notice how wholesome it sounded. It brought to mind daisies and fresh bread and similar such lovely things, "Oh, absolutely. Do you do lunch? There's a donut shop here that does sandwiches cheaply. I know you're on a budget, trying to put as much into that factory as possible."

He held the phone away from himself, eyeing it with wide eyes. Who was this person?

"Yes, I do lunch. I know the place you're referring to. I'll be there in half an hour and I'll be sitting by the window in the blue jacket."

"Perfect! See you then!" she sang, and then he heard the click of the PHS call ending. He put it back into his pocket and wondered how he was going to handle this. If people could get a hold of his number, maybe it was time to start making some safety measures. He was never unarmed, even when he was with customers in the brothel he kept his knife close, but there were different kinds of danger. Sure, he didn't have any money right now, but surely the word was spreading that he sporadically had a lot on him. What if he got mugged by a gang and couldn't defend himself? He couldn't rely on Venus to continue his work without him. She had a good heart, but she was too pragmatic to do something like protect the homeless out of the goodness of her heart.

He was going to need some bodyguards, and he would have to move to the Upper Plate the next time he had a big customer.

Letting Francis know where he would be, he kept his head down and walked to the donut shop. Inside, he inhaled the smell of sugar and cheap dough.

There were only two other people in the shop; an old man, with his hands suspiciously in his pockets, and a young woman in a pink dress with a braid that reached the small of her back.

He tapped the girl on the shoulder, and she turned around with a smile. In her arms was clasped a basket filled with white and yellow lilies, and their fragrance overrode the scent of the donuts. It was heady and fascinating, and when he met her eyes he saw that the flowers suited her. Beneath her innocent exterior, inexplicable wisdom gleamed through her face.

"Hello there," she said, holding out her hand, "I couldn't be happier to meet you. I'm flattered that you were willing to meet little old me in person, a busy man like you."

He smiled politely, still assessing her. She had a light build, with small bones and scant curves. She wouldn't do well in a fight, but since she was obviously secure enough to make her livelihood on the streets he guessed that she was a magic user.

"It's no imposition. I have to eat, and I was probably getting underfoot at the factory anyway."

They ordered sandwiches and donuts, and sat at the dirty bar ranged by the window. He just watched her for a while, and she watched him back. When she finished her first triangle of food, she spoke, "I won't play any games with you. I want you to start a program for orphans. This city has too many, and almost everyone preys on them. If they are given somewhere safe and stable to stay during their formative years, I believe that the number of adult and delinquent gangs will shrink to almost nothing."

Harry nodded, licking some ketchup off of his thumb, "Orphans are my next project, just as soon as I can find somewhere to put them. It's kind of a personal project, so you can be sure that it will get done."

"You lost your parents too?"

He looked at her sharply. She just giggled and swiped at his nose with her finger, "Don't look at me like that. I can tell that you aren't the family kind of guy. Let me guess: you were raised by your evil step-mother?"

"Close," he chortled, "It was my evil aunt."

She winced, "Ooh, that's unfortunate. My foster mother took me in because she was a friend of my mother's, before she was murdered. And yes, I can tell that we have that in common too. I'm kind of perceptive."

"Or psychic."

She waved a hand, "Or psychic, yes."

Once they'd finished eating, they got down to business and Aerith offered to organize the few bleeding hearts left in Midgar to recruit the homeless women he was going to give shelter to, to get the word out and let them know that there was somewhere for them to go.

"And," she finished triumphantly, "I know a Soldier Lieutenant who has some influence up top, and we can get some protection from Shinra's wily taxing ways if he does interference for us."

Harry brightened, "Really? Wow that would be very nice of him."

"He's a nice guy, and I can wrap him around my little finger if you need me to."

He laughed, "No, I don't think that that will be necessary. Francis tells me that the building will be ready by Monday, when the linens I ordered arrive, so we can take people then."

"I'll save that date. I want to be there when it opens, if that's okay with you."

"That's fine. It'll be good for morale."

000

Saturday rolled around, and he was again gussied up and walking through the Upper Plate on his way to the Shinra building. Ian demanded to know what he was doing up there with all the rich guys that made them so desperate to get him back into their beds, but Harry wasn't able to answer him to his satisfaction. Ian was convinced that Harry was doing some kind of new trick that had everyone fascinated.

He didn't know who had asked for him for the weekend since their printers were down and he couldn't get the information right away, only that they'd paid a ridiculous sum of money to win the bidding war that was waged over his weekend. If he was lucky, it wouldn't be some obese recluse who had a thing for taking what other people wanted and destroying it. That would be an undignified way to go.

His PHS 'pinged' as he was texted the exact address, and he pulled it up with his eyes closed, making a wish. When he opened them, he made a little whoop of joy. It was Sephiroth's room number!

Two weekends in a row…he was doing something right.

Stepping into the elevator, it took him a moment before he noticed the other person inside. Looking over, he spotted Reno and another guy with a very broad chest and a shaved head. Reno gave him a once-over and licked his lips, while his companion remained stoically looking straight ahead.

Harry winked at Reno for the fun of it, and this was encouragement enough for the redhead to sling his arm around his shoulders and ask him how his big project was going.

"It's going wonderful, thanks to Rufus. If he hadn't recommended someone as wonderful as Francis, I don't know where I'd be right now. We're scheduled to be in business the day after tomorrow, if you wanted to donate anything."

Reno snorted, "I don't have anything to donate anymore. I lost it all to this guy," he jabbed his thumb at Rude, "last night at the poker table. I lost my clothes too, but I didn't mind getting out of this monkey suit."

"But it looks so _good _on you," Harry replied, tracing the lapel with his fingertip. Soon he was going to have a lot of people depending on him for their next meal; he needed to flirt, and flirt a lot if he was going to get enough business to support everyone.

Reno chuckled low in his throat and squeezed his shoulder, "Oh, I'm glad I ran into you. Tell me, when do you get off work?"

"Noon, Sunday."

"Damn! I'm working that day."

Harry shrugged out from under his arm as they arrived at his floor, turning to nod to them, "I'm sorry to hear that. It would be nice to get together with a familiar face."

Reno grinned, "Oh, we can do more than get together."

Harry laughed and walked off, hearing the doors close behind him. He found Sephiroth's room easily, and paused outside his door before knocking. He was a few minutes early, and didn't want to look to eager.

The door flew open seconds after he knocked, and Sephiroth stood there in his office clothes with a hamburger in one hand. He smiled when he saw Harry, and stood to the side to let him in. Harry was dazzled by his teeth-showing, and numbly removed his shoes before following him into the kitchenette. The junk food was surprising, but charming. It was probably some kind of defiance gesture.

"So…" he said, and Sephiroth kissed him before he could say anything else.

000

End chapter 13

Yes, I ended it there to piss you guys off :P


	14. Chapter 14

A/N: No, we are not returning to regular updates of this. I still haven't finished Please Say Something, and I need to focus if I am expected to finish it. This is just to hold you over a little longer.

CHAPTER 14

Sliding his hands into Sephiroth's hair, Harry let himself release the pressure and the stress he'd been under. He was barely aware of it most of the time, but the pounding in his temples was obvious when it was suddenly removed. He felt no need to try and impress Sephiroth, and his tensed neck tendons uncoiled when unusually cool hands wrapped around them.

Separating with a soft smack sound, they rested with Harry's nose in the crook of Sephiroth's shoulder.

Sephiroth was out of breath and excited. He'd missed Harry more than he thought and hoped that Harry didn't mind the way he'd chosen to greet him. Judging from the palm creeping down the curve of his spine, Harry hadn't minded much.

His hamburger was still in his hand, and he took another bite of it. Harry snorted and tucked one hand into his back pocket.

"Is there any of that for me?"

Sephiroth paused in his chewing and looked at the burger contemplatively, "This is my fourth, and I have consumed 3/8 of its mass. You may have the rest in the name of fairness."

he leaned back so that they were facing each other again and accepted the burger. He bit into it and smiled up at him while he chewed. Once he'd swallowed, he asked, "So, did you have anything that you wanted in particular this weekend? This is our second session, so I think it's time that we understand what you want from me so I can make sure you have a satisfying experience."

Silver eyebrows flexed, drew together, and then he said, "I would like to…to talk to you, maybe?"

"Maybe?" Harry snorted, "We're talking now."

He nodded almost imperceptibly, "Yes, I know that, but…" he couldn't help it, he was remembering a conversation Zack had forced on him earlier in the day. After commenting on how much his mood had improved lately, he let a comment slip about how he needed to become more socially literate. Sure, he knew he was no social butterfly and that it was embarrassing (not that he'd ever tell anyone that!) when he wasn't sure what to do in a social setting, but how exactly did one fix a problem like that? Talking was the only thing that came to mind. He just hoped he didn't say something that would upset Harry or do what was called a _faux pas._

"But what?" Harry pressed, using his fingers to rub gentle circles on Sephiroth's forearm. He took another bite of the burger, noticing the way Sephiroth's eyes flicked down to his mouth when he nipped his tongue out for a spot of mayonnaise on his upper lip. He fluttered his eyes downward for a moment before looking back up, "If you have something on your mind, feel free to say it. I promise not to tell. I mean, who would I tell if it was secret, anyway? I don't know any of your friends or family, which I know of, that is. It's safe."

It was suddenly very awkward to be standing in the kitchen, now that they were both cooling off from their greeting.

"Um…do you want to go sit on the couch or go to your room?"

Sephiroth wasn't sure what he wanted. He wanted to just _be _with Harry. He wanted to touch him, to have sex with him, to talk to him, and to somehow understand him.

He wasn't sure about the understanding part, but he was willing to try.

Harry smiled at him again, and he didn't even process that he'd pounced on him again until he heard Harry drop the burger and fist his hair. His knees bumped into Harry's thighs, and he moved closer until he could hold Harry so tightly that he could feel every inch of him. It was more than intoxicating, and he daringly gripped Harry's hips. He just held him at first, then gripped tighter and lifted him up to eye level. Harry wrapped his legs around him and sighed a little, angling his head so that their noses would stop bumping.

He'd had a long day, so supporting Harry like this for an indefinite period of time, no matter how pleasurable, was not going to happen. Feeling for a counter, he set Harry on it. Harry pulled back and opened his mouth to ask if he was okay, but Sephiroth cupped his face and moved back in.

Harry tried to contain himself, but Sephiroth was kind of an intense upgrade from the kind of people he'd been with the past couple of days and it was overwhelming his mind. He clung to him and sniggered when Sephiroth accidentally tickled his ribs.

Sephiroth moved his lips to his cheeks, pressing his hands up his shirt and around the back just over Harry's kidneys. Moving down, he found twin dimples just above the waistband of his jeans. He filled them with his thumbs and pushed. Harry slid forward to the edge of the counter, and slipped his hands into Sephiroth's shirt.

Someone banged on the door, and Harry groaned.

Tearing himself away, Sephiroth went over to the door, opened it, hissed, "Fuck off!" to Zack and slammed it shut.

He was back with Harry, tongues re-tangled, before the knocking started up again.

"Aah!" he half yelled, half groaned. Harry started to laugh and licked his nose.

"Go on and answer them properly. I have a feeling we won't get to be alone until you do, and we don't want our weekend spoiled, do we?"

It was coy for him, but something about Sephiroth kind of forced hidden parts of his personality to come into the light. It was almost like spring cleaning. You found all kinds of interesting things you'd either forgotten or didn't expect at all. Sephiroth pressed his face into his neck, inhaled a lung-full of him, and then went to answer the door again.

Sliding off the counter, Harry guessed and opened a cupboard. He was right. There were mugs in it, only two, and he found some tea in a drawer. He could hear muffled conversation, but didn't tune his ears to listen in. it wasn't his business.

The faucet had a boiling feature, being the best model of sink available, and in less than thirty seconds he had a mug of steaming tea. It was kind of wonderful, what technology was capable of.

Sephiroth came back to the kitchen, followed by a brunette in the uniform of SOLDIER's officers. He blinked when he saw Harry perched on the counter with his tea in his hands, and didn't notice when he stepped in the burger, which Harry had forgotten all about. He looked down and took a hurried step back, trailing pickles and ketchup.

Harry chortled but muffled it as a cough.

"I…uh…" the SOLDIER was obviously flustered, and lifted his foot to pick the bun off of it. Sephiroth actually smirked, which Harry watched with hungry eyes. He loved seeing Sephiroth's different expressions. They were so subtle, but so naïve at the same time.

"…shit."

Harry hurriedly drank some tea. If he hadn't, he would've laughed, hard.

Standing there soiled with cheap food and obviously uncomfortable to suddenly find Harry there in addition to Sephiroth, Zack decided that it just wasn't his day. When Sephiroth told him that he could take some of his leftovers for dinner (because he was working late) if he would just _go away, _the last thing he expected was that Sephiroth was…entertaining. Though it was kind of obvious, now that he was looking; the telltale flush on Sephiroth's face, which was highly unusual, the hurry to get him out of his apartment, and the damp swollen look to his mouth all gave him away.

And the kid he had with him was cute! He didn't know what he would've been expecting, but the last thing on his mind was a quirky but cute young man. And he was drinking tea with his hands held like a kitten! He squealed inside and quickly stomped on that part of himself. In the past year, ever since Angeal's…well, ever since Angeal wasn't there anymore, he'd been trying to act like an adult. He was still kind of colorful, but that was just who he was. But this kid was bringing back the hyperactive side of him that loved small animals and loved Aerith most of all.

"Hello," Harry raised a hand, "I'm Harry."

"I'm Zack. I was just, uh, getting some food."

He took out one of the immaculately-prepared doggie bags from the fridge, nodded stiffly goodbye, and exited the kitchen. Pausing outside, he listened and heard Sephiroth move. A soft smack sound, followed by the rustle of hands gliding over clothed skin, rushed him out the door. He loved Sephiroth, he really did, and he wanted him to work out his issues. That did not mean that he wanted to know about his affairs with guys.

~000~

End chapter 14

Sorry it ain't very long, and sorry for the delay. This story still won't be regularly updated. This was just a taste to hold you die-hards over (how can a story this short have fans? It blows my mind).


	15. Chapter 15

A/N: Since Please Say Something is finally finished, along with some other projects that have been on the burners, this story can take the stage again. But don't expect super-regular updates because I am still in classes and generally slogging through life.

Also, check out my femslash Impositions and Infatuations. It's complete now and needs some love.

CHAPTER 15

A week had passed, and the factory-turned-dormitory was turning out beautifully. Francis was a real savior when it came to all the technical decisions that had to be made, and was infinitely patient with Harry's many questions about how the world of architecture worked. Harry's funds were not looking so good, though. He was getting a lot of fan mail from customers (apparently he had a fan club…) thanks to working every single night without stopping, but his bills killed any joy he might have felt when the postman came.

He just didn't know what to do: there was no way he could work more than he already was, and he couldn't get a day job or he wouldn't be able to keep his eyes open at night.

It wasn't until he confided his money troubles in Venus that she handed him a poster she'd picked up from the police office last time she was arrested for stealing. There was a reward, not very big but enough to keep the taxman off his back for a few weeks, for some guy named Miles Ennico.

"You think we should take on this guy?" he clarified, and she nodded.

"Yeah. I've met this asshole, and trust me; he's only as smart as luck will let him be. That and a little birdie told me that he just won some kind of territory battle with Kei over a drug district. This means that they'll be hitting party town pretty hard tonight."

He smirked, "I like the way you think."

She took a sip of water and flexed her shoulders, "Hey, I have to keep my reputation afloat. I want to contribute to this whole Battle against Evil thing you've got going on."

~000~

He worked very hard to get his appointments done in record time that night, finishing up by two instead of five, in order to keep as much of his evening free as possible. He showered and changed into street clothes instead of the thin robe he usually wore around the brothel.

Looking himself over in the mirror, he un-tucked his shirt and made sure that only about half the buttons were done up. Satisfied with how ridiculously tight his jeans were and that his boots were sturdy but easy to remove (no socks), he left.

Venus met him in an alley they liked to call Piss from the way it smelled and they headed down to party town. They kept their eyes peeled for Miles and his crew of scumbags, who Venus apparently knew by sight. According to her, they had a really bad reputation. They beat their hookers if they were in a bad temper, and only paid when they felt like it.

The only reason they managed to hire anybody at all was there was always some young idiot who hadn't gotten the message that they were bad news.

They located them in a strip club, one of the seediest on the block of seedy establishments. Harry barely dodged a vomiting drunk on his way in. Once in, it wasn't hard to find them despite the low lighting. Venus touched his arm to let him know that she was separating from him to go offer her services to one of the henchmen.

Harry focused on Miles, sitting in the front row nursing a brightly colored drink of some kind.

He took a deep breath and then brushed past him, dropping a pistil in his drink while he was distracted. He stayed close and waited until Miles turned pale and slowly placed his hand over his mouth. He stood unsteadily, waved off his henchmen, and headed for the restroom. Harry followed him.

Miles had gone into the large stall at the end, and he could hear him retching. Grimacing, he reached into his boot for his knife. Stepping into the stall behind him, he grabbed his hair and jerked his head back. One swift move of his knife and his throat was slit. He fell forward, gasping blood into the toilet bowl as his life faded. Harry looked away until the sounds trailed off.

Now came the tricky part. He took the thin silk scarf he wore around his neck off and used it to wrap Miles' neck until it stopped bleeding and his head was braced onto his shoulders. Grabbing him under his armpits, he lifted him up and manhandled him out the back door and into the alley behind the club.

All he had to do was wait and hope that none of the henchmen thought to look out back for their missing boss. Venus came out 20 minutes later, stuffing money into her sequined bra, and helped him take the body to the tube system.

They rode to the police station, Miles between them, and struggled into the building at long last. The man behind the wooden counter looked up with a sleepy look and then recoiled when he caught sight of the blood-soaked corpse propped against his desk.

"Dear god!"

Harry didn't react to that, "Sir, could you direct us to the person that hands out rewards for criminals?"

He pointed to a door down the hall and with a nod they set off.

Miles was identified, recorded, and their reward was handed over with a look of awe by a young aide.

Outside in the night air again, Harry offered to let Venus keep her share of the money. Shaking her head, she shoved the money into his hands.

"No, you keep it. You're the one who needs it. You and those girls, that is. Besides, I didn't even kill him. You did."

He chewed his lip but accepted her arguments. He wasn't going to argue when he really did need the money. Aerith was going to be so happy when she saw this- she was the one who powered the organization when he wasn't there.

They were one tiny step closer to a crime-free Midgar. One less scumbag off the streets, twenty more clueless minions without a leader.

Not bad for a night's work.

~000~

End chapter 15

It's a half-update, yeah.


	16. Chapter 16

CHAPTER 16

The criminal system works rather a lot like any self-respecting royal family. No matter how many members you kill off, there is always some bastard child or forgotten cousin to fill the post. And if neither of those can be found, a politician will slither into the spot and start a new dynasty.

This is a fancy way of saying that, before Harry's head hit his pillow that morning, Mile's gang had a new leader and a new vendetta.

What Harry didn't know was that there was a method to the madness of Midgar's crime scene. He was aware that there was a hierarchy of some kind, but to what extent he had no idea.

The first thing you need to know about the crime lords of Midgar is that they all answer to Willkie Firth. Willkie is the cream of the crop, the Big Boss, the head of the snake. A non-descript man n the shorter, stockier side with brown eyes and hair and a crooked nose from an improperly healed break way back in the day, he often walks the streets on the same beat he had way back in the day when he was a cop of the original Midgar, before Shinra and SOLDIER and Mako changed everything. He controls the Boys, the Cats and the Tobys (with input from Toby, of course). Only a privileged few know him on sight and recognize him for what he is, the real power in Midgar.

President Shinra was a fly, an irritating gnat, to Willkie, easily squashed and replaced like a billion others of his kind.

Next after Willkie on the food chain is Allen "Flashy" Fitzgerald, Willkie's right-hand man and best friend. He worked as a secretary in a research lab when they first started working on converting Mako into a useable power source before getting promoted several times until he reached his current senior position on the board of scientists. He works closely with Dr. Hojo, the madman responsible for SOLDIER, and usually keeps his thumb on the pulse of any new innovations. Responsible for 'anonymously' suggesting the creation of the Turks, he works closely with them behind the back of Veld and Tseng. He's a lanky man, with thick spectacles and bountiful hair that curls to his shoulders in a hurricane of static. No one knows why he's called "Flashy", and no one wants to ask.

Does the web of evil stop here? Not at all; next on the list is the man that keeps Willkie and Flashy from going off their heads and doing anything stupid. Power tends to drive even the most stable person towards insanity, so that one person who will speak with the voice of the reason is, in some ways, worth more than those he reasons with.

This man is named Bryan "Puff" Kissinger. Much younger than both Willkie and Flashy, who are getting on in years, he is the all-knowing bouncer at their elite private club who listens to their problems when not manning the door and makes sure that those problems are resolved in a timely fashion. Roughly the dimensions of a small mountain with muscles that 'puff' out everywhere, he has a shaved head and barely an inch of skin that isn't tattooed. You can't miss him in a crowd.

These three can be found together most nights at the club "King, Queen", drinking and smoking and planning their next move. Their current project is finding the man who poisoned the water supply and, predictably, killing him. Preferably without anyone finding out about it who isn't supposed to. These men might be criminals, but they aren't stupid and General Sephiroth was one of the few humans they couldn't intimidate or manipulate.

Flashy believed that something had gone wrong in the labs when he was a child, turning him into some kind of glacial machine of war and blood. They'd heard some rumors about him regularly utilizing a semi-high-class prostitute the past couple of weeks, but there had been plenty of rumors like that before so they paid no attention to them. If they persisted for over a year or if proof somehow surfaced, then, well, that prostitute could expect a midnight meeting with some persuasive gents out for a chat.

But continuing down our family tree, next after Puff is Toby Swick, known to some as Slick Swick, though those people never seem to be around for very long, so you'd best just call him Mr. Toby like he asks. An ex-assassin from Mideel, he met Willkie 30 years ago when Willkie was supposed to arrest him and ended up letting him get away. Out of this initial meeting and several subsequent battles grew deep mutual respect for one another. When Willkie left the police and shifted down the rungs of authority into the dark side, he sought out Toby and asked him to make him a sort of army of people. No bad people, just…logical people that knew how to solve problems. This is how the Tobys came to be. Mr. Toby personally over-sees the training of the Tobys, who he looks on as his children. He's an older man now, approaching 60, still with all the signs of power about him; a deep scar runs the length of his right cheek, splitting his lip and disappearing under the neck of his shirt, and on his hands are a heart and a dagger.

Having covered the bosses who stick above the masses, there remain the three categories of organized lackeys: The Boys, the Cats, and the Tobys. The Boys are a group of roughly five hundred men of all walks of life who monitor and gather information. They write or verbally deliver monthly reports and come with anything urgent immediately. Being the chief source of information, they are treated with consideration and respect.

The Cats are also in the information sector, though in a different way. The Cats are women, mostly of the 'ornamental' type, who use their painted lips and supple bodies to wedge their way into as many doors as possible and listen to the things said in private by powerful men when they think their bimbos are too stupid to know what's going on. The Cats are hard to distinguish from normal women of negotiable virtue, as they are easily bribed to part with information as well. The difference is that the Cats report directly to Puff, who relays the information to Willkie.

And last we have the Tobys. Named after Toby Swick, they are the bad boys of the mob. The Turks training program was designed to be similar to theirs, which involves anything from gymnastics to advanced weapon training. They do the dirty work.

Below these people is a rabble of rival gangs and cutthroats, disorganized and unwashed. They are of no consequence.

~000~

When Harry woke up the next morning, it was with a sense of dread. Somehow, he knew that things were about to get very, very difficult for him. He only hoped that he'd find time to slip away with Sephiroth on the weekends.

~000~

End chapter 16

This is short! And slightly ridiculous. Like it anyway, please?


	17. Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

Harry was solicited by a man named Kazuo, who made an appointment for a session during noon. He was sitting in his room trying to do something with his hair when Venus climbed in the window. He got up and shut his door as casually as possible and then locked it. It wouldn't look good for him to have a random woman in his rooms. She avoided the bed and sat on the desk tucked into a corner.

"I heard through the grapevine that Kazuo asked for you."

He nodded, "Yeah, so?"

"So he's a Toby."

He looked at her blankly.

"A Toby is a grunt for the big boss. You know, an assassin?" she explained impatiently, waving her hands while waiting for him to understand what she was saying. His eyes widened and he sat down hurriedly on his bed, looking paler than he had a minute ago. She laid her foot on his knee and smiled, though worry still flickered around her eyes, "Hey, this is what you wanted, right? This guy is your way in."

"You're right. Thanks for telling me," he gave a breathless laugh, "You won't believe me, but with everything that's been going on lately I practically forgot that I was going somewhere with this."

"You forgot the plan?"

"Mm-hm."

She squirmed off the dresser and ducked her head to kiss his cheek, "Don't forget your plan. I'm counting on you to clean up my city."

He smirked and slapped her side as she climbed out the window. She kicked her foot wildly, hitting him in the face.

When she was gone he went back to his grooming. He made sure he smelt good, looked good, and could fake enthusiasm convincingly. This accomplished, he strolled out and made small talk with Ian until five minutes before his appointment. He didn't want to neglect the other prostitutes in his brothel or they could begin to think that he was stuck-up from all the attention he had. That could turn to resentment and then to playing pranks on him. He thought of pierced condoms and glue in his lubricant and winced. No, one's brothel mates were not the people to upset.

Kazuo was over 30 and so rangy he looked more like a drug addict than an elite assassin. Harry smiled at him and opened his mouth to greet him. Kazuo cut him off.

"I don't want a relationship with you, kid. I want a fuck. Get undressed. And don't speak unless I tell you to."

Harry nodded and stripped quickly and efficiently. He had never had a customer like this but he was a lot more comfortable with the sex part of his profession now and was prepared to endure whatever he had in store. He could only hope that Kazuo would be more relaxed afterwards. He couldn't get any information if he was going to stay this stone-cold.

When it was over he was dying for a pain killer. Or perhaps a whole bottle of the little white tablets that were his lifesavers. Kazuo dressed quickly, showing no signs of wanting to chat. Harry died a little inside. So much for that idea.

He leaned over the dresser to look in the mirror as he knotted his tie. Harry watched dispassionately from the bed, too scared to stand. He didn't know what kind of pain his ass was in right now and he didn't want to find out. Thankfully he was still numb. He smiled at Kazuo's reflection. He was still silent so a smile was the most he could do to try and soften him up. Kazuo grunted.

"I heard you were good. I wasn't disappointed. You'll see me again."

_Fuck._

Harry smiled outside as he panicked on the inside. What if this guy 'claimed him' and wouldn't let anyone else from the mob see him? What if he broke his hips or his tailbone? He wasn't exactly gentle.

The door slammed behind him. Harry fumbled under the bed for his bottle of water and his medicine. Popping twice the recommended dosage, he sank back against the pillows and waited for them to kick in. once he was suitably numb, he crawled into the shower and sagged against the wall. He was exhausted.

He dozed off in the shower, leaning against the cold tile with the hot water running down his bruised back. At one point during their meeting, Harry had ended up slammed against a door and it was not going to go over well with his boss.

His prediction was correct and he spent thirty minutes listening to his boss wail about how the bruises depreciated Harry's value and why didn't he say something? He didn't even attempt to defend himself. What would be the point? You can't argue with stubborn people.

When he was allowed to go, he checked his phone for messages. There was one from Francis saying that the shelter was now up and ready for habitation. He did a little dance in the hall, not caring who saw him, and then walked out into the gloomy slums with a daft grin stretching his face. He went first to his apartment to pack up what little possessions he had acquired and then to the shelter. Francis was already there when he arrived, sitting on a sofa in the front entrance area.

He stood when he saw Harry and shook his hand.

"I never thought I'd say this when I first started this project, but I have to say that this was the most rewarding thing I have ever built."

Harry beamed. "You certainly made things beautiful, Francis. It was a pleasure to have you work for me."

"Any time. I mean it. Besides, it looks good in my portfolio. You wouldn't believe how much positive feedback I've been getting from the bleeding hearts Above Plate. A lot of people would like to donate."

Harry's eyebrows went up.

"I said I would mention it to you," Francis smiled and handed him a document with the people interested in donating and some ideas about holding a benefit dinner in the Shinra building. This done, they took a tour of the finished building. Right now it could sleep 200 adults and 300 children, but if he put up cots in the halls he would be able to sleep at least 100 more. He took notes about everything Francis rattled off and especially his ideas about bathing and eating shifts that would help keep the bathrooms and kitchens from getting mobbed.

Venus showed up halfway through with a bloody lip. She mouthed to Harry that she'd tell him later and he let it go.

He shook hands with Francis again when the tour was over and watched the architect leave with bemusement. When he was gone he whirled to Venus and asked her what happened. She made him come up to their living quarters to unpack first. As he tucked away his scant wardrobe onto the shelves mounted against the wall, she said,

"I don't really know. I was walking down the street, on my way here, when a man just…lost it. He hit me in the face, knocked me down, and would have started kicking me if the Clifford, the guy that owns that weapons shop across the way, hadn't come out and restrained him."

Harry sensed there was something she wasn't telling him and said so. She swallowed.

"His eyes, Harry. They were glowing but not like the SOLDIERS. They were wild; like an animal. When he hit me, he was growling. He almost looked inhuman."

He felt cold inside. He had been known to have a bizarre ability to feel trouble long before it came, and this was definitely trouble. He didn't know what, but this was the start of something horrible.

They turned to the topic of advertising the shelter, but they really needn't have bothered. News travelled fast under the Plate and by that evening they had over a hundred people living with them. More than half of them were children under the age of five.

Aerith showed up before their first walk-in, and proved to be a god send. Harry was feeling overwhelmed until she explained to him the very processes he had designed to keep track of everyone and make sure that they didn't pick up any undesirables. He decided not to assign tasks until the next morning. It was too much to ask these young women and much younger children to do anything more than look confused or sleep at the moment.

Dinner was hastily-made soup and stale bread donated from a bakery above the Plate. No one complained and, other than the sounds of excited young ones, it was peaceful in the shelter. Before dinner was over several older women, some of them mothers to the pregnant women approached him and volunteered to act as managers. He interviewed them privately one at a time and used his Auror training to analyze their behavior for signs of sadism or insanity. Finding none, he accepted their proposals and shared with them how the shelter was meant to function.

Diagrams of the eating schedules and information such as which providers they purchased or received food from would need to be made and mounted on the walls of the office. A girl with a two-year-old son and blue hair shyly volunteered to draw larger images of his original plans if he got her paper and pens.

He thought they turned out well.

The laundry room was swamped almost as much as the bathrooms. Many of the women now staying there hadn't had a bath or clean clothes in months and were eager to wash off the city grime. He almost didn't recognize most of them when they emerged from the baths tidy and clean. Venus was originally planning to hit the streets after dinner but got sucked into the kitchen to help make muesli for tomorrow's breakfast.

It was a long time before everyone settled down to sleep, and even that was interrupted regularly by the younger children. When he was allowed to slip away to his room, he felt utterly drained. He set his alarm and then climbed into bed fully clothed to wait for morning.

Harry lay awake all night thinking. He was sure he was doing the right thing now. Seeing all these girls had strengthened his resolve to improve the city one thing at a time. Now all he needed was some information about who to kill and he could get his more violent reforms over with. The thought of the executions (there was no other word for it) he still needed to carry out made him sick.

And whatever had happened to the man that attacked Venus earlier was making him jumpy.

Next morning he found several screaming women surrounding the body of one of his security guards. He was dead; two shots to the head and heart. There was a note pinned to his shirt that said,

_We know it was you._

Further investigations revealed that an attached shed containing cleaning supplies for the bathrooms had been vandalized. The words from the note had been spray-painted all over the shed. The rest of the building was left untouched and none of the girls had been violated or threatened. He looked for his other security guard and found him unconscious from a blow to the head on the other side of the converted factory.

He sent him to the kitchens for Aerith to heal with her Materia.

When he left for his day job at the weapons shop, he was frowning. This was not good. He was sure that the attackers had been cohorts of the crook, Miles Ennico, he killed. Who else had he picked a fight with? It was a setback that they knew who he was, but as far as he was concerned, it just meant that he would have to kill them sooner rather than later.

He assigned the toughest manager the task of hiring new security before he left, and now he wondered if he should have done it himself. Would she hire people that could do the job right? He hoped so.

The day was spent putting the clerical work into coherency. He didn't know what Robert, his boss, was smoking, but it had to be potent if the state of the back office was any indication.

His work was interrupted ten minutes until closing time by the jangle of the door. Robert had already taken off, leaving Harry to lock up, so he was alone with their latest customer. He got his gun before he left the back, pleasant smile on his lips. Customer service was important to him.

The man standing by the knife display was immediately recognized as one of the men he'd seen with Miles the night he murdered him. He drew his gun and fired just as the other man drew a knife from behind his back. He threw it as the bullet hit his chest and knocked him back into a barrel filled with ammunition. Harry ducked the knife but it sliced off a piece of his hair.

Breathing hard, he came over and shot the man in the head. It was always better to be safe than sorry.

Once he was sure that he was dead, he had to figure out what to do with the body. There had been a reward for Miles. Perhaps there was for this man as well? He could use the money.

He locked up the store and slipped into the back. Switching the computer back on, he searched through their internet until he found a bank of wanted criminals. It took ages to scroll through the images of white men aged 25-30, but finally he found the face he was looking for. The reward wasn't large, but it was for dead or alive and that was what counted.

The site had a number to call for sightings. He picked up the phone and dialed, propping it between his neck and shoulder. He peeked out into the store proper to make sure the guy was still there. He was.

"Hello, this is the police information division. My name is Sheryl. How can I help you?"

"Hi! I am calling to report that I have found and killed a certain criminal number 4599. I have his body ready at my location for you to collect in exchange for the reward."

"Oh. Well, I'll send someone over. Your address?"

He gave her the relevant information including his name and then sat back in his chair to wait. He fiddled with his hair, cleaned the blood off of himself and the store, and alphabetized things that didn't need to be alphabetized while he waited. Finally there was a knock at the door. He peeked first as was glad he did. It wasn't the police. It was one of the other men from the wanted files and Ennico's gang. Harry loaded his shotgun and then whipped open the door when he saw the man look ready to leave. His target didn't stand a chance. He fired.

The man fell back, a hole where his chest used to be. Harry made a mental note about the close range effects of his weapon.

Just then a police van came into view. It parked in front of the weapon's store. The officers that emerged from it looked impressed and then annoyed to find that they had two bodies to deal with and not just one. Harry collected his reward and sent them on their merry way.

He cleaned up the store again, locked it, and left for the brothel. On his way he called the shelter and made sure that everything was running smoothly. He told Venus about the men and the rewards and laughed when she crowed victoriously.

When he arrived he barely had time to shower between appointments. Kazuo had left some very nice comments about him on their website, in direct contrast to his behavior in person, and he was booked up to his eyebrows. He didn't get to sleep until four in the morning. He still had to wake up two hours later to bathe again (all he seemed to do these days was wash) and nip down to the shelter before he had to go to the weapon's store again.

The new security guards were bigger than the last ones, and there were twice as many. He asked why, having specifically allocated funds for security and not wanting their food budget to suffer. Janet, the manager that hired them, explained that one of them was her brother and the other was her husband and that they were willing to split the pay in exchange for meals. He accepted this decision and went around making sure that everyone was satisfied.

He found Aerith attending to some of the girls further along in their pregnancies. When she had a breather between girls (their numbers had swelled to 350-ish while he was gone and he was getting worried about space already), she asked him if he would consider expanding the shelter to all homeless pregnant women.

"I would love to, Aerith, but where will we put them?"

"I already thought of that. There is a storage facility not too far from here that's been unused for as long as I can remember. It's mostly populated by monsters and vandals now, and doesn't serve any real purpose. I think you could buy it and see if you can get Francis to convert it for you."

Harry chewed his lip, "That's going to be expensive."

"I know. But I think we can do it. Besides, if you start converting all the unused buildings around here, you'll clean up the whole landscape in no time. There's a lot of empty space that just needs to be fixed up. And think about this: the more you clean up, the fewer places the monsters can hide. Other than disease and violence, monsters are the third-most common cause of death in Midgar."

Aerith knew exactly how to phrase things so that he felt like he had no choice. He scowled at her. She smiled with all the innocence of a sunbeam and then turned her attention to the latest very pregnant girl to hobble in the door. He stayed to watch. He didn't know what she was doing with that Materia of hers, but the girls looked relieved after she was done drawing circles on their bellies and foreheads with the stone.

He left to try and get some sleep.

The following weeks became a blur of splitting his time between the brothel, the shop, and the shelter. His body ached from customers despite the painkillers and he felt mentally and emotionally drained from the pressure of keeping the shelter together. It was easier to pay their bills now that a number of restaurants above the Plate donated their leftovers to them.

Even though he was feeling like a spinning top from stress, he still couldn't help but notice that a gray veil seemed to be descending over the city. And then the children started getting sick. At first he thought it was just at his shelter, but the papers showed that they were dropping like flies everywhere. No one at the shelter had died yet (he suspected Aerith's Materia had something to do with that), but there was a lot of coughing and no one seemed to have much appetite.

And then the violence started.

The Lower Plate had always been a lawless place. They had police and visits from SOLDIERS (and the mob) to keep things from descending completely into chaos, but there was always a high rate of violent crime. Despite this, lately their rates had spiked higher than anyone could remember before. The worst part was that there was no logical explanation for the crimes.

Perfectly harmless people, fathers, shopkeepers, clerks, and nurses, would seemingly lose all control of their emotions. The death rates choked their mortuaries and crematoriums. Bodies were left for days in private homes while families waited for an open slot at the crematorium. Ceremonies were privatized by necessity.

Harry's business went up as depressed spouses or boyfriends came to him to forget about their problems.

During this time of terror, Harry continued to review the police wanted files and track down the men photographed. The rewards he collected from this now made up one third of his income. One day at the station he met Jerry a gray old cop that was sick of corruption and wanted to end it as badly as Harry did. Jerry became his informant and ran interference when criminals started dropping like flies. He concealed Harry's identity to keep him from getting profiled as a psychotic killer.

It was from Jerry that he got his first glimpse into the structure of the mob. Jerry told him about Toby Swick, Kazuo's boss, and taught him how to spot a Cat, the prostitutes that worked as informants specifically for the mob.

With his newfound informant, he no longer needed to endure Kazuo's brutal assaults upon his hips in hopes of getting a clue out of him eventually. He killed him by using a poison that absorbed into the skin. He sprinkled on his socks while Kazuo was cleaning up in the bathroom. Practice had desensitized him to his vigilante role, and he didn't think twice about taking Kazuo's life. He knew the risks when he chose to enter the mob. He should've known that few criminals see old age before they die.

Back at the shelter, which was now hopelessly crowded, he found that two children had died. The cause of death? Mako poisoning. Now all they had to do was figure out where in the hell the children were getting exposed to Mako and they could stop the plague spreading across the city.

Harry suspected that the Mako could also be behind the random violence outbreaks.

While he raised money to purchase the warehouse, he could afford to have three stories built on top of the current shelter made from wood. They weren't as solid as the rest of the building, but they would stand for at least 30 years and that was what mattered. No matter what he did, though, the shelter was fuller every day. It seemed everyone in Midgar needed help. He wasn't blind: he knew Aerith was letting a lot of people that weren't pregnant or even female stay at the shelter. He didn't call her on it, though. He would've done the same thing if he wasn't in charge.

On top of everything worrying him, he started coughing. He suspected that he'd contracted Mako poisoning as well. It was only a matter of time before he was bedridden like so many others.

~000~

Meanwhile, above the Plate, Sephiroth sat morosely at his desk.

He had lots of things to worry about, like the new death rates from mysterious causes and freakish circumstances surrounding them. He should also be worried about his SOLDIERS, who had become even more restless lately as the Mako slowly suffused them even though they drank re-filtered or imported water on his advice.

All he could think about though was that Harry's status on the brothel website was constantly set to 'busy'. He had tried to schedule a meeting only to find that he wasn't available until next month, and only for an hour. He took the meeting, but still wondered if he'd ever really get to see him again.

He was lonely. He almost regretted meeting Harry. Before Harry he didn't know that he was missing something, but now that he'd had it only to have it taken away again he felt empty. Sitting back in his chair, he sipped his coffee and tried to work up a desire to work.

~000~

End chapter 17

IT HAS BEEN FOREVER. I know that and I am sorry. But this is the start of regular updates. Yay? YAY!

Oh, and there will be more Sephiroth in the next chapter.


	18. Chapter 18

CHAPTER 18

There were two more days of uneasy peace before all hell broke loose.

Sephiroth was demonstrating the new sword katas to the Instructors to teach their students when the voice of Joan came over the intercom. For the first time in the many years she had worked for him, she sounded genuinely distressed.

"Would General Sephiroth please come to room 355A for a meeting with the Board? Thank you."

He nodded to the class, handed off the wooden sword he'd been using to Zack so he could finish, and left. As he strode down the halls and then rode in the elevator all the way up to the business center of the Shinra building he wondered what could have gone wrong this time. Perhaps something had happened to make the President concerned about the water issue? The death rates had become alarming, after all. Surely he couldn't continue to ignore the obvious issue forever.

When he opened the door to the meeting room, he immediately noticed something new. Normally the room consisted of a table, roller chairs, and the members of the Board. Today the room also contained Professor Hojo and one of his SOLDIERS, a man named Charles Rockshaft. Charles was strapped to a chair in a heavy state of sedation with Hojo standing close by scribbling notes on his infernal clipboard.

The President was pale and Reeve Tuesti looked like his universe had collapsed. The other members of the Board just seemed confused.

"Ah, Sephiroth! Thank you for joining us on such short notice. Please, take a seat," the President gestured magnanimously to his usual spot. Sephiroth sat and reached out to take a donut from the plate. He took a bite and raised his eyebrows at the President as a non-verbal prod to get on with it. The President cleared his throat.

"Well, I'm sure you're all wondering why you're here."

Scarlet snorted scornfully. The President ignored her.

"I'm not going to beat around the bush. This morning one of our SOLDIER elite had a psychotic fit while patrolling the Lower Plate and killed over 200 civilians before someone called the emergency response service and we were able to restrain him."

Silence descended over the Board. Everyone sat still as statues as they thought about what this meant. Sephiroth felt dread seizing up his insides and forming knots in his back. A tension headache began to pound through his temples. This was not good. This was not good at all. It had begun. Somehow he had hoped that they would solve the water problem before things got to this point, but that hope was dead now. Charles would be the first of many. The President went on.

"Unfortunately it is too late to cover this up. The event occurred in a well-populated area and was video-recorded by a number of security cameras and civilians. The newspapers are already writing articles and some have been published in the past hour. I anticipate that this will lead to public outrage and possibly riots, so the P.R. team has spent the past few hours working on what we are going to tell the Press."

Documents were passed out to the members of the Board by the President's secretary. Sephiroth skimmed his with a frown.

"We are going to treat this as a freak occurrence caused by performance-enhancing drugs and say that the SOLDIER has been taken into a secure facility where he can't hurt anybody else. Professor Hojo has agreed to analyze Mr. Rockshaft to find out what made him lose his control so that we can prevent this kind of thing from happening again. Please do not speak to the Press unless directly approached and questioned on this issue. The sooner people forget about this the better. And under no circumstances are you to mention that it was the Mako that caused this tragedy. We cannot afford to lose the people's trust in our very foundation. You are dismissed."

Sephiroth stayed after the others had left. The President nodded to him and then left him alone with Hojo and his SOLDIER. He ignored Hojo, who was in a world of his own, and approached Charles. Charlie blinked blearily at him and then suddenly smiled, looking more like a shark than a man. Sephiroth had planned to say a few words to comfort him, to let him know that he was forgiven. But that look showed him without a doubt that the Charlie he had trained and fought beside was gone. There was something mindless and destructive in his place.

The donut he'd snacked on felt like lead inside him. He ended up in the elevator with Reeve, who clutched the document to his chest like a schoolgirl. He flinched when Sephiroth suddenly punched the side of the elevator.

"Relax, Tuesti. I'm not going to lose it like Rockshaft."

Reeve sighed and gave him a shaky smile, "Sorry. I didn't mean to offend you."

Sephiroth waved him off, too depressed and worked up about losing Rockshaft to care about anything else.

"Hey, listen, I think we should have another meeting with…with you-know-who. This problem needs to get resolved before anything like this happens again."

He sighed and nodded, "I agree. Ask him if he can meet us tonight. I don't care where or for how long. I just want to know what the hell he is doing about this situation."

"R-right."

The elevator stopped and Reeve stepped out. Before the doors could close he turned to Sephiroth and said, "I'm sorry. For your…loss."

Sephiroth jerked his head in acknowledgement. The doors slid shut. Alone, he sagged against the wall and put his hands over his face. Contrary to public opinion, he was not made of stone. Rockshaft had been a good SOLDIER and a better man. He could only imagine what his wife was feeling right now. He reached into his pocket and took out his PHS.

Scrolling through his contacts, he found Zack and typed out an order for him to speak to Una about her husband's decease. Charlie wasn't dead yet, but he would be very soon if he knew Hojo (which he did). He would have spoken to her himself, but through a process of trial and error he had found that he was more intimidating than comforting. Zack, however, possessed the right kind of emotional intelligence to deliver news like this without scaring anybody.

Joan was sitting at her desk when he rounded the corner to his office. She started when she saw him and tried to look busy. He laid his hand on her shoulder, one of the few times he felt it was right to touch her. She froze and then let out a sob. He knelt by her desk and let her ruin his shirt with her old lady tears.

Her grief was understandable. He trained the SOLDIERS and thought of them as a combination of brothers and children, but Joan was there just as much as he was and thought of them as hers just as much as he did. Losing one of them, and like this, was as devastating as a death in the family.

She recovered her composure after a few minutes and sat up. She straightened her bun and sniffed. He patted her cheek and stood up.

"If you would like the rest of the day off-"

"Finish that sentence and you'll regret it, General."

He smirked, happy to see that some of her old spirit had returned even if her voice was still a little raspy.

"Yes ma'am."

~000~

No sooner had the President released their statement regarding the SOLDIER incident to the press than it happened again; and again. Over a thousand were killed before the crazed SOLDIERS responsible for turning an entire Sector into a charnel house were restrained and executed. Thankfully it was the least-populated and most run-down Sector, but that was slim comfort compared to the horror that they could have unleashed upon the entire city if given a chance.

There was a furor and the Shinra building was mobbed by outraged civilians demanding that something be done to restrain the bloody-handed SOLDIERS. Pro-SOLDIER posters and souvenir wagons were destroyed or vandalized to loud cheers from the people.

During the onslaught on the Shinra building a man lost his mind to the Mako and seized a young woman by the hair. In front of hundreds of yelling people too confused to notice right away, he tore out her throat with his teeth and began to eat her flesh. When his actions were perceived he was trampled to death by panicked members of the mob.

Security guards worked their way through the mob and retrieved the body for examination in the labs. A hush seemed to fall over the crowd when they realized what this meant. It wasn't just the SOLDIERS that were dangerous now. It was all of them. Their co-workers, their neighbors, and even their family could lose their humanity at any moment.

The crowd disbanded and many sought isolation in their living quarters. Very few people left home for work the next day.

~000~

Sephiroth demanded information from Reeve and found out that Willkie Collins had claimed that he was too busy to meet with them. All he said was that he was working on the water situation.

He threw a useless desk ornament out the window in rage.

Lately his emotions had been stronger than usual, leading him to express than outwardly instead of keeping them inside. He knew it was because of the Mako and it terrified him to think of what would happen if _he _were to lose control.

His thoughts turned to the information about his childhood as a lab toy for Professor Hojo. Perhaps he should devote some time once this water crisis was over in tracking down whatever Jenova was. Perhaps she, for Jenova was referred to as female in Hojo's notes, could give him some advice on how to manage his emotions better. There was a chance that, even when the water was cleaned, that he would be stuck in this state of heightened emotion.

He finished up his routine reports and made some decisions about what to say to the men to comfort them. Many were just as afraid of themselves as the people outside were of them, and they would need some powerful words to stay strong even as public opinion rose higher against them than ever.

Zack crept into his office just as he was getting up to leave. Sephiroth took one look at his face and sat down.

"What happened?"

"Fourteen recruits have deserted the army."

The significance of this sank in slowly. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was running out of expendable things to smash or throw away and couldn't afford another tantrum today. He let it out slowly, much calmer now. He nodded to Zack.

"Thank you for telling me."

Zack smiled sadly and turned to go. Before he left, he asked, "Um, sir?"

"Yes?"

"What should I say to the men? They are frightened."

"I'll speak to them at dinner tonight. Say whatever you want. The truth if you have to."

Zack left. Sephiroth took off for his private quarters and changed into what he wore when he infiltrated the slums incognito. Normally he went down in full regalia to build hero worship for the army, but proclaiming his identity would do more harm than good in lieu of recent events.

He was going hunting. The quarry? Willkie Collins. He didn't care how busy the man was. This was going to stop now.

~000~

The slums were grayer and emptier than he ever remembered them being before. Store lights were off and the streets were deserted except for a few streetwalkers hovering shyly in the corners, half in shadow. Light flicked off glittery underwear and shone on their make-up if they could afford it. He ignored them.

Willkie spent most of his time when not walking his beat in an old water reservoir. The inside had been converted into an office and living quarters. A flimsy wooden staircase circled around the reservoir, leading up to a deceptively weak door. The entire interior of the reservoir was welded steel.

Puff sat casually on the bottom step of the reservoir smoking a cigar. He didn't recognize Sephiroth in his civilian's clothes with a hood covering his distinctive hair.

"Can I help you?"

"Let me through."

He stood, flexing his muscles subtly. The effect was still quite powerful. Unfortunately for him, Sephiroth was probably the only man on earth who couldn't be threatened away with a little show of potential pain. He swiped at his face with the flat of his hand and he went flying as though he were made of paper and not solid muscle.

The release of pent-up testosterone was like a breath of fresh air for Sephiroth. He even threw an apology over his shoulder as he ascended the steps.

As expected, Puff was not the only security. The door had a keypad and he knew for a fact that there would be at least four Tobys on the other side of it if not the Toby Swick himself. He hacked the keypad by looking at which keys had the most signs of wear and was inside before Puff even began to stir and moan on the pavement.

He stepped inside.

Willkie looked up from his desk and found a strange man standing there. His Tobys had surrounded him, guns at the ready, but this man didn't seem frightened at all. He looked at him more closely and found something familiar in the set of his shoulders and the way he distributed his weight. He gestured for them to lower their weapons and they did so, though with some reluctance.

"Search him."

They patted him down thoroughly and found nothing. Not even a PHS. Finally they knocked back his hood to check for razors taped to the inside and his hair spilled over one shoulder. He'd tied it back high on his head, but there was just too much for it to stay contained for long. Willkie jerked with surprise and then recovered his composure a split second later. Sephiroth had caught the fear in his eyes, though, and he let a feral smile twist his lips. He normally saved what Zack called his Devil's Grin for more desperate situations, but he wasn't very happy with Willkie right now.

"General. I wasn't expecting you."

He shrugged, "You wouldn't come to me, so I've come to you. I don't know if you recall this, but we had a deal. You were going to look into everyone's favorite Shinra-hating extremists to find out if any of them were responsible for poisoning our water and the entire city. I haven't seen any of your research, and I think an explanation is in order."

Willkie smiled genially and gestured to the chair in front of his desk, "Please, sit down. We can discuss this like reasonable adults."

"Oh, any discussion at all would be fine with me," Sephiroth replied facetiously. He took a seat after swiftly checking for traps or hidden spikes. He leaned back with spread legs and rested his left ankle on his right knee. He smiled at Willkie with that Devil's Grin and watched him squirm. Willkie might him at the center of his spider's web, but it was obvious who the frightened one was.

Willkie dug into a drawer and pulled out a sheaf of paper. He passed it to Sephiroth. Sephiroth didn't pick them up.

Clearing his throat, he said, "I, ah, those are the groups we have looked into. So far we haven't had any luck and suspect that it wasn't organized. We think it might be a single man."

"Have you observed the maintenance workers assigned to our water storage and purification?"

"…No."

Sephiroth raised his eyebrows, "It's been over a month and you haven't even done that?"

Willkie showed some strain at last, "You don't understand what things have been like down here! Some upstart has made a shelter for young mothers, which does not look menacing, and someone is killing my men!"

Sephiroth stood, taking the papers, "That's not my problem. I think the recent massacres should put things into perspective for you. I have already lost too many of my men and I won't lose any more than necessary.

"In case you are still confused, I'm going to spell it out for you. _If you don't find out who's poisoning the water, I will._ But only after I've killed you and everyone who works for you. Do you understand me?"

Willkie made a little gesture and the Tobys all came at him at once. Sephiroth could only wonder why the fact that he hadn't bothered to bring a weapon didn't tip them off that attacking him was a bad idea. He broke two of their necks in the first moment, kicked a third in the stomach hard enough to make him vomit blood, and threw the other one out the door and down the stairs.

He turned back to Willkie and saw that he now held a gun in one shaking hand. From his wide eyes he knew he had impressed him. He was used to that look. He wasn't fully human and his fighting style reflected that. Sometimes it could come as a shock to experienced fighters used to seeing certain limitations even in super-enhanced SOLDIERS.

He fired. Sephiroth turned to the side, neatly avoiding it. Willkie didn't try to shoot again. He just sat down slowly behind his desk, all of his years showing suddenly. Before his shaky confidence had made him seem ageless, but now Sephiroth could see every line stress and years of fighting had etched onto his face.

He left the door open behind him and disappeared into the night.

~000~

Rufus called Harry just as one of the girls went into labor. He had to go out onto the roof of the crowded shelter to hear him. In direct contrast to the loving pandemonium of his shelter, the Midgar outside its walls was as silent as the grave. Most people were afraid to leave their homes these days and the only traffic was food delivery trucks, emergency vehicles, and hearses sent to collect the bodies of those who died in relative quiet from the Mako.

"It's so nice to hear from you, Rufus! What can I do for you?"

He heard Rufus chuckle, "Don't ask me what you can for _me, _darling, but what _I _can do for _you."_

Harry blinked, "Okay. What can you do for me?"

"I would like to throw you a benefit dinner. I promise to organize all the details and send out invitations and all that if you'll just show up. I know better than to demand any time from you. My informants say you look like death from over-work and I won't be the one to put anymore burdens on your back."

You could've knocked him over with a feather. He gushed, "Oh my god, thank you so much! This is so unexpected, so generous of you-"

"Please, please, say no more. Just keep the 19th open from 4 until 1 a.m. Sometimes these dinners go overtime, but that just means more donations."

"Yeah, yeah, okay," he fumbled in his pocket for his address book and scribbled in the date with a pencil stub. "I still can't believe you would do something this nice for the girls and I. we really appreciate it!"

"Don't mention it. Francis mentioned to me that you are saving up for another shelter?"

"That's correct."

"Consider it done."

Harry fell on his ass. He had a coughing fit in the middle of pouring out his thanks. It wasn't until after he'd hung up that he found blood on his hand and lips. The cold feeling inside that had been swept away by Rufus' generosity came back a hundredfold. This was bad. He wiped his mouth on a tissue and threw it into the trash on his way down.

He went inside the common room share the good news.

~000~

It was three in the morning and Sephiroth couldn't sleep. He gave up on trying and reached under his bed for his laptop. Sitting up against the headboard while it booted up, he thought about Harry. Harry was the reason he couldn't sleep. With all the insanity that had been going on lately, he had almost forgotten to feel lonely. But the feeling always came back when he was alone like this and without distractions.

He opened a window and gave into temptation. He hacked into the brothel records to see who was taking up all of Harry's time.

He had been expecting a myriad of names, possibly some celebrities mixed in with the businessmen. What he found was that one man named Osbert Lancaster had been to see Harry at least three times a week for hours on end since he became 'busy'.

Sephiroth had never felt legitimately jealous before. He threw his laptop against the wall and it smashed into three pieces. He drew his knees up to his chest, hugging them. He tried to get control of himself but spent the rest of the night in a flaming inferno of hatred for this Osbert person anyway.

Towards morning he began to wonder why he cared so much. This was Midgar. There were thousands upon thousands of hookers here. What made Harry so special? He was attractive but certainly not the most beautiful person Sephiroth had ever seen. He was good in bed, but so were so many others.

What was it that kept him coming back?

He decided it was something about the way he carried himself, the way he said things. The way he looked when he laughed, when he was lying sweaty and sated in bed next to him; the sound of his voice.

He rolled over into the fetal position and stared at the softly glowing numbers on his alarm clock. It was half an hour before he had to get out of bed. Though he was jittery with energy from his emotional rollercoaster, work was the last place he wanted to go. He didn't want to look at reports of low morale, of fights, and of deserters that needed to be punished. He just wanted to see Harry again, if only for a few minutes. If he could just see him, everything would be so much easier to bear.

~000~

Aerith was refusing to go to the benefit. Harry wasted an hour following her around the kitchen trying to find out why she, who was such an integral part of the shelter, didn't want to go to a simple dinner at the Shinra building to raise some money for their charges.

"Harry, I'm not going. I told you I'm not going, and I want you to accept that."

"But why?" he dragged out the 'y' in a whine, flopping onto the sofa crammed in the front hall beside her. She took some knitting out of her bag and began to purl. She ignored him. With a sigh he finally gave up and went to shower and dress for the big night. She was right: it was her decision. But he was still dying with curiosity.

He had another coughing fit in the shower and watched the blood-pinkened water disappear down the drain. He wished there was something he could do to combat the Mako as it putrefied him from the inside. For now all he could do was hope that his body could beat the Mako and either expel it or integrate it positively into his body's structure. There weren't many of them, but the people that beat the virus had a quiet glow in their eyes that he envied. It was part Mako, part victory over nature.

The thought of losing to this virus was heartbreaking. There was so much he had to do before he could die. People needed him.

He dressed quickly and left with still-damp hair. It would look like shit no matter what he did so he didn't even try to groom it. The train to the Upper Plate was empty. The girl that sold him his ticket seemed frightened even inside her glass cage. He smiled at her and she smiled shakily back.

The ballroom the benefit was to be held in was stunning. He stood stock still in the doorway and just admired it for a solid minute. It was a paragon of classical taste, complete with white columns and gilt moldings. The ceiling was painted to look like a blue sky populated by fluffy white clouds, a perfect image of summer and well-being. It had been so long since he'd seen a sky like that that the sight made him homesick.

Rufus materialized beside him as though from thin air. Harry smiled at him.

"This is so beautiful. I can't think you enough."

Rufus smiled and patted him on the back, leading him inside to show him the menu. As they walked he said, "I have a confession to make. Things have been bleak up here since the killings started. A lot of people want to do something for the people under the Plate but there isn't a specific charity for that. You are as close as they can get. Giving you their money will give them peace of mind. Everyone goes home happy."

Harry snorted and stole a piece of cheese from a platter to snack on.

"Still. I appreciate it."

"I accept your appreciation. Moving on; do you have a copy of your speeches I could review?"

Harry blinked at him owlishly, "Speeches? What speeches?"

An hour of panic and furious writing later, Harry had a nice welcoming speech complete with a rundown of what the shelter did and a flawless gratitude speech to read at the end of the evening. Looking breathless with relief, Rufus said, "It's a good thing I told you to be here so early. This also gives me time to fix your tie. Here, I anticipated this and brought a few of my own. The one you have on is horrendous."

Harry looked down at his salmon-colored tie and had to agree.

When the guests arrived and were seated, he was pressed and dressed to perfection while still looking just pitifully unkempt enough to make people feel that he actually needed their money. He thanked everyone for coming and went on to explain the shelter and how the plight of those living under the Plate had influenced him to get a second job to save up enough money to help those that could not help themselves.

Several women, tightly encased in velvet and silk evening gowns, burst into tears during the speech and had to leave.

Once the speech was over and they were served dinner, Harry began to relax. He made polite conversation with those seated at his table and answered all of their questions. His days as a boy hero came in handy. He could think up answers to difficult and sometimes bizarre questions on the fly.

He could feel Rufus sending him admiring looks as he observed him work his boy wonder magic on the benefactors. He wondered if he would be getting an appointment request from the Vice President sometime in the future. He decided he wouldn't mind too much. Rufus had done so much for him.

There was a raffle or two after dinner and then some dancing. He got out of it by saying that he had a bad leg and slipped out into the hall for a breather. The discovery that the hall was being used by the offspring of the rich to make out drove him to seek refuge in the men's bathroom a few floors down instead. The entire section of this part of the building was opulently decorated and seemed to be devoted entirely to ballrooms and some exclusive suites.

Harry sat on the little chair provided in the bathroom and just let himself breathe. The strain of coming up here and charming people had made his throat sore. He massaged it and thought about why Aerith wouldn't come up.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sounds of someone washing their hands. He glanced over at the person as they left and gasped. The man stopped and turned to look at him.

It was Sephiroth.

He wore slacks and a nice shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He looked tired.

"Harry?"

Before he could stop himself, the words, "Hello lovely," spilled out. Sephiroth flushed a little, much to Harry's surprise, and came over to stand by his chair. After a moment of hesitation, he got to his knees so that their eyes would be more level. Harry sat up and just let himself look at his favorite person on this planet for a while.

It'd been so long since he'd seen Sephiroth that he'd started to forget little things about his face. The elegant slope of his nose in particular. He couldn't help it. He smoothed one finger down that long pale nose and smiled a little smile. Sephiroth closed his eyes when he touched his cheeks, finding flecks of missed stubble. Sephiroth must have been busy these days, if his shaving was sloppy. His fingers wandered to his hair, and he tucked a lock of it behind his ear and out of his eyes.

Sephiroth opened his eyes and flicked them at Harry's mouth. Harry smiled slowly.

"I missed you."

It was a whisper, and neither of them was sure who said it.

And suddenly the mood was over. Sephiroth jerked to his feet and demanded, "Who the fuck is Osbert Lancaster?"

Harry was so surprised he didn't understand what he was asking for a few moments. When the question computed, his eyes widened with understanding. Sephiroth was…jealous? He started to snicker. He couldn't help it; the look on Sephiroth's face was too priceless. It had just the right amount of outrage and possessiveness on it.

"What's so funny?"

Harry waved a hand, wheezing. It hurt to laugh. Finally he answered the question.

"Osbert is some fat son of a bitch that comes to see me a couple times a week. I hate him but he pays for my bread and butter, so I can't tell him to find some other pretty boy to screw around with. It's not like he's _you."_

Sephiroth's face seemed to pause. A sly look came into his eyes when he understood something Harry didn't know he'd let slip. He knelt down again, this time in front of him. He leaned forward, one hand on each armrest. Harry was trapped but he didn't mind a bit.

"What did you mean by that?"

And Harry had no choice but to confess.

"You're my favorite. To be honest, you're the only person in this city that I would willingly sleep with every day of my life. Oh god, that was extremely unprofessional of me. I am so sorry-"

Sephiroth kissed him.

~000~

Rufus had to give the farewell speech as Harry seemed to have disappeared. He covered for him by saying that an emergency had called him back to the shelter. They had raised rather a lot of money.

He asked one of his personal Turks to check the security feed for what became of Harry. His eyebrows went up when he found that he'd just gone off for some alone time only to encounter the General. The last of their footage was of Harry and Sephiroth entering the General's private quarters while engaged in some rather passionate fumbling at one another's clothes.

He had to smile at the sight. Harry was a remarkable man.

~000~

End chapter 18

Love confession! That's right, people. Well, a lust one anyway. Close enough. Love comes later.


	19. Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19

They didn't bother to turn on the lights when they made it Sephiroth's apartment.

Harry hadn't realized how sexually frustrated he was until he felt Sephiroth's hands wandering across his hips and pelvis. Customers weren't required to perform well when hiring a whore and he had been left hanging more times than he could even try to count. But now he had to fight to keep control of his body's reactions.

Sephiroth divested him of his suit jacket and got to work on the buttons of his starched shirt, never taking his lips from Harry's for more than a moment. Harry gave up on breathing normally and let himself pant and gasp when his body wanted to. Sephiroth said something but Harry didn't hear what it was. He was lifted then and carried into the bedroom.

He couldn't remember being carried like that before; it was kind of nice even if it did make him feel like a girl.

Sprawled on the bed, he shimmied out of the rest of his clothes and helped Sephiroth do the same. One of his socks clung stubbornly to his foot long after the rest of the clothes were gone. Harry laughed as he tried to tug it off with shaking fingers. Sephiroth sat behind him with Harry between his legs dueling the sock. He pressed long kisses to the back of his neck.

Finally the sock was removed. Harry threw it into the darkness and lay back against Sephiroth's chest. Sephiroth moved from the back to the side of his neck and then to his lips.

"I want to…"

Harry knew what he meant and rolled over near the end of the bed on his back. His glasses were god knows where now and it was dark, but he knew immediately when Sephiroth was close by. He felt the warmth radiating from his skin before he covered Harry's body with his own and carefully insinuated himself between his legs. His hands lingered on the limbs long past necessity, exploring and admiring the contours of his muscles. Harry was glad for once that his vocation required him to keep them hairless. The sensation of those calloused palms against the butter-soft skin of his inner thighs was fantastic.

Harry jerked with surprise when Sephiroth's mouth appeared at his groin. He had a split-second sensation of hot breath on the crown of his erection before something just as hot but wet as well licked him. He let out a sharp breath and tried very hard not to do anything embarrassing like whimper. It was too late and he squirmed helplessly when the licking continued for several long minutes. There was a wet kiss then, interrupting the heavenly swipes of long tongue, followed by the sensation of being swallowed. Sephiroth swallowed him much deeper than he'd anticipated or hoped. His hips surged up and off the bed.

Large hands guided his hips in and out, up and down on the mattress, controlling Harry's natural tendencies. He shuddered and moaned, one leg hooked around Sephiroth's broad shoulders. He didn't know how but he could feel Sephiroth smile when a long drawn-out 'fuck' escaped his lips. A finger began to stretch him and some sanity returned. He changed his breathing patterns to make the stretching easier and nearly lost his mind when Sephiroth began to suck hard.

"Ah, don't!" he yelled, fisting his long hair. It was too late and orgasm rushed over him like a hurricane. He stiffened, thrashed, and went still. Hyper-sensitive now, he whimpered when Sephiroth continued to suck, gently this time, until all the fluid was gone.

Somewhere during his orgasm, three fingers had managed to scissor him wide enough to handle Sephiroth's size. Sephiroth got up on his heels, slicked everything down again just to be sure, and then took hold of Harry's hips again. Harry bent his knees to his chest, grabbing hold of the undersides of his thighs. Sephiroth sank inside of him inch by inch. There was a slick sound and Harry snickered. He felt Sephiroth bend down and smile against his ear, taking one hand from his hips to curve under Harry's lower back. The result of this was that the angle of his hips changed and very quickly Sephiroth was completely inside him. Harry felt him shudder and let out a rush of breath against his neck.

Idly, he wondered if Sephiroth had slept with anyone else since their last meeting. A selfish part of him hoped not.

Sephiroth swore quietly in a language he didn't understand and began to thrust. Arousal swept through him and he found himself hard and aching again. He was sure that that was some kind of record for recovery. Harry arched as best as he could without support and met him thrust for thrust, gasping and clutching at his shoulders, his back, his buttocks. His nails bit into the skin and Sephiroth actually growled against his ear, nipping at it with his lips.

You would think that the process of sex would have become boring, routine to him now. And most of the time you would be right. This was different. Desire made everything so much better, so much more powerful. The whisper of Sephiroth's hair dragging across his skin as his body moved forward and backwards was intoxicating in both sensation and scent. Every sound of their bodies twisting closer together; the pleasured noises they didn't try to hold inside; everything about the encounter aroused him. As he bent low his stomach slid across Harry's erection, stimulating him further.

The bed creaked when they began to move in earnest, but neither of them noticed. Harry could only think about Sephiroth and what he was doing to him, and Sephiroth's mind was a nearly-blank slate populated only by the desire to give and receive pleasure.

Harry's head hung over the side of the bed. He relaxed his neck and just let himself go. Tension coiled tightly inside of him, pleasure sparking across his fingertips and toes. He could tell that there was something different about this orgasm but was powerless to stop it.

Sephiroth's groans had become louder and the frequency of his unintelligible swearing increased. Harry opened his eyes and squinted. In the dimmest of light, courtesy of the glowing numbers of Sephiroth's alarm clock, he saw that he was frowning and tense with exertion. The muscles of his arms and back bunched and relaxed with every thrust. Harry smiled at the sight and then threw his head back over the edge.

The coil snapped loose and unraveled inside him. Ecstasy flooded his veins like a drug. His hips stilled and every part of his body went stiff and tight, and his nails tore through the skin of Sephiroth's biceps. Sephiroth let out a shout that was almost a scream and slammed all of his weight into four final thrusts. He shuddered and released inside him.

Harry was numb and as limp as a wet towel. He didn't have the strength to blink, much less to push Sephiroth's crushing weight off of his chest.

Sephiroth recovered before he did and slowly slid out and off of him. He collapsed beside him. A moment later he reached over and touched his cheek. Harry blinked slowly and then shimmied his way back onto the bed before his neck could protest. Sephiroth wiped the semen off of his chest and Harry's with the edge of the sheet and then pulled Harry onto his chest. Harry fell asleep with Sephiroth's soft deep breaths in his ears.

~000~

Harry awoke early the next morning feeling fuzzy and completely satisfied. He hadn't felt the latter since his last visit to…Sephiroth!

He sat bolt upright and stared down at the pale back of the sleeping General. His ridiculously long hair had been twisted up and clipped carelessly to the back of his head, presumably to prevent it strangling him in the night. He moved just slightly with his deep breaths. Harry saw his fingers twitch once, as though reaching for something.

He watched him for a while, lost in thoughts about what last night meant. Sephiroth wanted him; that much he remembered. His reaction to Harry's favoritism had been a pleasant surprise, but he was left to wonder if anything had really changed. Sure, he wasn't going to charge a cent for the tumble they took in the sheets last night. Other than that, though, it was the same.

Perhaps he should leave? Or would Sephiroth be upset and wish he had stayed until they were both awake? He glanced at the clock and sighed. He didn't have much of a choice. He needed to be behind the counter of the weapon shop in an hour.

Sephiroth wouldn't mind if he used his shower, he was sure.

The knob was simple enough to work and soon he was standing under warm spray working up lather with the soap bar. He hesitated before daring to use his hair products, though he was careful to use only a small dollop of each. For all he knew they were more expensive than the suit he'd worn last night. He experimentally sniffed at it and was surprised that it was unscented. Where did that musky scent that clung to his hair come from?

He finished undisturbed and toweled off. Last night's clothes were scattered around the apartment and he had to hunt for his underwear like the dickens before he found it tangled in the covers next to Sephiroth's foot. He gently extricated it without waking Sephiroth and finished dressing. He wondered what to do with the tie Rufus had loaned him and decided to put it in his pocket for safe keeping.

Clean and dressed, he was again confronted with what to do. Sephiroth made his choice for him by immediately snapping awake at 6 a.m. His eyes spun wildly around the room and landed on Harry. Harry smiled shyly. He wasn't very good at the morning after.

"Are you leaving?" his voice was raspy with sleep. He crawled out of bed regardless of his nudity and came over to join Harry by the door. He bent his head and kissed his cheek, "Don't go."

Harry sighed and sagged against him. Sephiroth was still warm and heavy with sleep, and he could feel these details so much more when Sephiroth wrapped his long arms around him and held him close. He smelled wonderful, like sex and that musk his hair seemed to emit. His lips pressed against Harry's temple, his ear, and even his hair.

"Please don't go. I want you to stay."

The temptation to ditch all responsibility was so strong then that he felt dizzy with it. He could do it. He could shirk a long boring day behind the counter followed by several hours of frantic work at the shelter. He spend all day here, instead, luxuriating in bed and having sex with someone he was genuinely attracted to.

Sephiroth touched the back of his neck and tilted his head back to cover his mouth with his. Harry gave himself up to the kiss, sliding his hands through that thick hair. He had to stand on his toes but he didn't mind. There were benefits to Sephiroth's dimensions.

His chest began to vibrate with an oncoming coughing fit. He broke away, panic shooting through him as he thought about how Sephiroth would react. It was too late to hide it and he fell back against the door from the spasms, covering his mouth with his sleeve. He remembered only after the fit subsided that his shirt was white. Bright crimson droplets spattered the elbow.

He looked up. Sephiroth was looking at his sleeve. His eyes travelled from the sleeve to Harry's pale face. Now that he was paying attention and it was daylight, he could see that Harry was much paler than he remembered him being. Dark circles made his eyes seem just slightly sunken and he was thinner too.

"You're sick."

Harry shrugged, "It's not contagious."

"You're sick," Sephiroth repeated, feeling numb inside. This was too much to bear. If Harry died-

No. He couldn't think about that. Not now, when so many others were dying from the sickness. He pulled Harry back against his chest. Harry put his arms around his waist and he shuddered when he felt the warm wet of the blood touch his naked skin. So help him, he was going to stop this. He didn't care what it took.

"I have to go," Harry's voice, which he now heard was quieter with a faint rasp, broke the silence, "I have a day job."

"Alright," he reluctantly let go of him and kissed the side of his nose, "Can I see you again sometime?"

"I don't know," Harry responded honestly.

Sephiroth nodded, "Well, if you ever have some free time, come find me. I don't care what time it is. You can come by anytime."

Harry smiled and blushed a little. He didn't know what to call what they were starting, but he liked it.

"Okay. Um, bye."

"Bye."

The door shut and Sephiroth felt completely alone.

~000~

When he went to the office he found Joan sitting up straighter than usual. Her lips were pinched tightly together. Without speaking or making eye contact, she handed him that day's edition of Midgar's most popular newspaper. Splattered across the front was a picture of a water bottle with the word 'poison' written on it.

The headline said, "Our Water Has Been Poisoned".

He nodded to Joan and went into his office, taking the paper with him. According to the article, which he speed-read in seconds, an anonymous man said to be working for the notorious Willkie Firth had informed one of the paper's reporters that the water was not only being poisoned by an unknown entity but that the President himself was made aware of this and chose to do nothing. The city was experiencing a full-on plague of Mako sickness, and the reporter advised drinking only imported water and avoiding baths if possible.

Wheeling his chair around to look out the window, he looked down and saw what appeared to be ants clustered around the base of the building. The people were rioting again and he honestly couldn't blame them. Their President was never the most honorable of men, but this time he was truly despicable.

After a moment of rapid decision-making, he picked up his phone and called Willkie. He smirked when he heard concealed terror in the mob boss' voice.

"General! What a surprise."

"Meet me in Bailey's in thirty minutes. Bring your scientist."

"I-"

"It wasn't a suggestion."

He hung up and did a few routine tasks before putting on his hooded coat and heading out. He told Joan that he was going out for a private meeting and not to let anyone in his office. She nodded and wished him luck. He suspected she knew where he was going and why. He could never figure out how, but Joan always knew everything before anyone else.

Bailey's was the usual shadowy bar with a disreputable set of regulars. It was the only one of its kind on the Upper Plate and served as a sort of half-way point for those who lived exclusively on the Upper Plate to meet with useful people from the slums. Sephiroth had only ever used it a handful of times, mostly because he had no qualms about the slums, unlike other fastidious people.

He asked Cormac Bailey, the bar's founder and bartender, if he could use one of his back rooms. Cormac didn't bat an eye at the sight of him or try to make small talk. He led him to a small room tucked between the bathroom and kitchen and asked if he was expecting anyone. He described Willkie and Cormac nodded.

While he waited he used his PHS to remotely access his email. He answered the usual bothersome requests with his usual answer of 'no', or, if it was especially offensive, 'fuck no'. He didn't like to swear often as it depreciated his respectability, but there are times when they are the only appropriate things to say.

Willkie was right on time. As requested, he had brought along his wild-haired cohort from the labs.

As Sephiroth had suspected, they had several folders of recent information with them. He gestured for them to sit and they did. Flashy looked preoccupied, his usual facial expression. Willkie passed him the folders and said, "We did what you suggested, and I think we know who is responsible."

Sephiroth hummed, looking through the papers. He found a snapshot and some information about what appeared to be a solo environmental extremist named Ezekiel Munro. Ezekiel worked as a janitor in the water purification centers, but his keycards would give him access to every part of the facility, putting him in an ideal position to kill those he apparently believed to be worthy of death for "killing the Planet by using her blood to power their televisions."

"He seems likely."

Willkie nodded.

"Have you taken him into custody?"

"Not yet. There have been some…complications."

Sephiroth looked up, "What kind of complications?"

"Well, I don't know if you read the papers, but one of my Tobys went rogue and sold a reporter our information about the water being poisoned. He has since been executed, but the damage is done. The water facilities are now guarded like gold. We can't get anywhere near 'em."

Sephiroth sighed.

"Does Ezekiel live at the water center?"

"Yes. That's why we haven't been able to nab him. they have some bunks for homeless employees; it was part of one of those social programs that they tried to get started a few years ago."

"I see. We'll talk about that later. Flashy," Flashy looked up and seemed to realize for the first time that he wasn't in the labs anymore. His wild hair crackled around his head like a halo of genius, "I requested your presence because I'd like to know how progress is going on a cure for the Mako poisoning."

"The progress has been excellent considering the magnitude of the problem. We have discovered a mineral combination that delivers a severe flush to all of the organs and the blood stream, effectively purging the virus."

Sephiroth frowned, "If you have a cure, then why isn't it being distributed? This city cannot survive without people to populate it and sustain our ecosystem."

Flashy shrugged, "A minor setback."

"What kind of setback?"

"So far our subjects have gone into first shock, then convulsions, and then died from the stress of the flush."

Sephiroth's dawning hope of some way to help Harry was stomped on. The very thought of Harry having so much as a tremor of pain set his teeth on edge. Out loud he said, "I can see why that would be a problem. Here's my card. Call me every day and let me know the progress of your research."

"Very well," he pocketed the card, "Is that all? I need to be back at the labs soon."

"You can go. Willkie stays, though. I still need to talk to you."

Once alone they began to map out a plan of attack against Ezekiel. There was no question about letting him live. After the amount of peaceful and violent deaths he was responsible for he deserved to be given the most painful death possible. But first they had to make sure that he really was responsible.

Willkie suggested getting a few of his Tobys, those proven to be loyal, integrated into the new poison-filtering task force at the facility. They could then use their access cards to scan the water tanks for Ezekiel's fingerprints. And if nothing was found that way, they could also install surveillance cameras.

Sephiroth agreed to this strategy and made plans to meet at Bailey's again next week to study their progress and any new information that may have risen to the surface. They parted on friendlier terms than they had at their last meeting. Sephiroth scowled when he was once again riding the elevator up to his office. He despised the mob but they had their uses.

~000~

Harry was about ready to quit his useless little job at the weapon shop. He felt like he was wasting his time and his talent, but he couldn't afford to quit it. If he screwed up his gig as a prostitute this was his fall-back solution. Jobs were hard to come by in Midgar. Honest ones, anyway.

He closed up the shop for the night and stepped out onto the street. It was empty. He shook his head at the pitiful sight and set his steps for the brothel. Technically he didn't work there on the days he worked at the weapon shop but someone had made a special request and offered such an exorbitant price that he could not in good conscience refuse and indirectly take food out of the mouths of those dependent on him.

He called Ian and asked if the computer had processed the name of his customer for that evening. He hoped against hope that it was Sephiroth coming down for a surprise visit but he knew that it was more than likely the man he'd come to think of as Fucking Osbert. Osbert was becoming a bit of a problem, really. He was horrible in bed and wheezed like a dying animal all through the process but seemed to enjoy coming to see Harry every chance he could. He paid enough money to buy the devil himself, though, so Harry couldn't complain too much.

Ian confirmed his fears that it was, in fact, Osbert that had requested him.

He was scowling as he stalked towards his destination and therefore didn't notice the man shadowing him until he jumped on his back. Harry went down, his Mako-weak body not putting up nearly as much of a fight as he could have a mere month ago. He cried out as his knees hit the hard cement.

Rolling, he drew his knife. He found himself eye-to-eye with a Mako-crazed male civilian. There was blood down the front of his shirt, evidence that someone else had already fallen victim to his hands. Harry stabbed at his neck but the man dodged. He was quick for someone in such an advanced state of sickness. He tackled Harry and pinned him to the concrete. For a terrifying moment Harry thought he was going to lose.

But then Harry managed to fight him off He stabbed wildly with his knife and got him in the eye. He felt sick as the knife disappeared into his skull up to the handle.

He yanked it back out despite the temptation to leave it. Fumbling in the man's pockets, he found his wallet and his PHS. He took both and went to the nearest public restroom. He locked himself in a stall. Tearing the wallet and its contents into pieces, he flushed everything but the cash and the PHS down the drain. He looked in the PHS's contacts and raised his eyebrows when he recognized more than twenty numbers all ending with the extension Venus had taught him to look for- the extension that marked them as Tobys.

He pocketed the phone and then left the stall to clean himself up at the sink. While he was rinsing the blood off of his face he thought about how vulnerable his new weakness made him. If the mob discovered that he was the one responsible for their shrinking ranks, he wouldn't be able to defend himself.

Osbert scolded him for being a few minutes late and pulled him onto his fat knee. Harry hid his disgust and cooed apologies into his ear like some trollop. Out of all of his customers, Osbert was one of the few that legitimately made him feel like a whore.

He wished it was Sephiroth he was perched on instead.

~000~

End chapter 19

For those of you who are perverts, behold the lemon! For those of you who are not, behold the rest of the chapter!


	20. Chapter 20

A/N: Oh my goodness. I just looked at the statistics for this story and saw that it passed the 500 reviews point! AWESOME.

CHAPTER 20

It was the witching hour and Midgar was quieter then than it had ever been before. Half the city's population had succumbed to the sickness now and people were migrating to anywhere but there by the hundreds every day. No one wanted to live in that dying place anymore. Those who remained had given up hope or simply couldn't afford to start new lives somewhere else.

The water tanks hummed softly in the gloom of the purification facility. Somewhere a tap dripped. The sound of it echoed in the stillness.

A red eye hidden between two metal barrels was the only witness to the door on the far side of the room opening. It opened just far enough to admit a figure. A square of glowing blue light from the water tanks, illuminated a gangly body topped with a scruffy beard briefly. The figure passed into darkness again.

The man tripped on the cuff of his large janitor's uniform. He cursed and picked himself back up. Reaching into his generous pocket he pulled out a rectangular metal case about the size of a hardcover novel. He opened it and examined its contents before closing it with a grunt of satisfaction, presumably because the contents were undamaged by the fall.

His gangly body scrambled up the metal ladder attached to the side of a water tank. He sat cross-legged on top of it and opened a hatch on the top. The metal case made a reappearance and a glowing green vial flashed in the dark before it was upended over the hatch. The contents swirled into the blue water, resembling hair as the strands spread out smaller and smaller until they were invisible.

The man hadn't noticed the red light blinking as photographs were taken of the man's face and his actions.

He had just put his foot on the lowest rung of the ladder attached to the next water tank when the door opened again. This time there was no attempt at subterfuge. Lights flickered on and the door snapped off of its hinges. The gangly man didn't stop to see who it was. He bolted for the small emergency exit at the opposite end of the room.

If he had stopped to look he wouldn't have bothered to run.

A blur of black and silver spun across the sight of the camera and slammed into the fleeing janitor. He went down like a sack of potatoes and stayed there.

~000~

Ezekiel Munro was not a happy man. This did not make him an exception to the rule. Very few people born and bred in Midgar, despite its advanced technology and status as capital of the Planet, are happy; there is something in the air there, be it Above or Below the Plate, that sucks all the joy out of a person.

However, what did make him exceptional was that he did not accept his status as just another cog in the great wheel of Shinra that dominated the Planet. Ezekiel fought back.

In every society there is a section labeled 'extremists'. Ezekiel was an extremist. Whatever he set his mind upon grew to such proportions that it consumed all of his time and energy. Unfortunately for the city of Midgar, Ezekiel had become involved with environmentalists. Now this is not to say that there is anything wrong with caring about the environment. The environment is what keeps you alive, so ignoring its needs is suicidal.

However, resorting to terrorism against the innocent or ignorant crosses an ethical line; no one told Ezekiel this, though.

As an extremist lover of the environment, Ezekiel devoured all the information he could find about it. As he studied the world we live in, he began to notice some disturbing patterns. Ezekiel was a very intelligent man; that was what made him dangerous. Not everyone who mans a mop to make his money is a fool. He noticed that the bizarre crop failures and famines coincided directly with the yearly Mako extraction statistics. Looking a little closer revealed that Mako could only be directly connected to the Planet's ability to support life.

He became convinced that mankind was destroying the ground he stood on. He also became convinced that the only way to stop this problem and save the Planet was to kill the center of Mako extraction and the man that invented uses for it.

As a low-level laborer at the water purification center he was in a unique position to carry out his plans for the annihilation of Midgar's populace. Mako in its raw form is not easy to get access to considering that the fumes alone can induce organ failure, but there are always people willing to sell the forbidden. He found a man without a name who worked in the Shinra laboratories. He was unappreciated and under-paid and bitter. A chance to make some extra cash on the side selling Mako to a man he believed to be just another crazy collector didn't seem wrong at the time.

Ezekiel didn't hesitate to use his procured poison on the water supply. He was cautious at first, only dosing one tank at a time and only once every few months. He was careful to never dose the same tank twice in a row. But gradually as there were no signs of anyone catching on, he grew bolder. He began to poison two, maybe three tanks at a time. And then he began poisoning all of them when impatience got the better of him. He wanted the annihilation to come faster.

When the death rates first began to appear he could have grinned for weeks. Finally things were fitting together.

He was not expecting to be caught.

~000~

Sephiroth stood over the bound body of Ezekiel Munro, mass-murderer, and wondered if anyone would blame him for breaking every bone in his skinny under-fed body.

Zack vibrated with energy beside him. his presence held Sephiroth back. Having a rage-fuelled freak out with his lieutenant present would be unprofessional to the extreme. He scratched his chin, feeling stubble. He'd been too distracted to shave that morning.

"What are we going to do with him?" Zack finally asked, his wide blue eyes darting from Ezekiel's unconscious body to his superior. Sephiroth shrugged, an uncharacteristic gesture for him.

"I was so concentrated on catching him that I didn't even think that far ahead."

Zack boggled but kept his exclamation of 'who are you and what have you done with my boss?' to himself. Everyone had been acting a little funny lately because of the Mako, so it was only logical that it would have some effect on the General as well. Still, it was weird. He was used to Sephiroth acting like a Very Busy Man. Not like a…normal person.

"Well, do you want me to call somebody and report him?"

"Who, the police?"

Zack thought about it. This seemed too big of a deal to call the police, who were considered something of a city-wide joke, about. But there weren't any other options. The Turks only did shady things and this obviously wasn't the department of SOLDIER. He got out his PHS and dialed their number.

He was greeted and asked to state his emergency.

"Hi! This is Lieutenant Fair of SOLDIER. I would like to report the capture of a terrorist."

He hung up after arranging for a van to come and collect them. Sephiroth was chewing his lips, eyes still fixed on Ezekiel. Zack coughed and said in a low voice, "You can hit him if you want. I'll look away and say I didn't see anything."

"Don't tempt me like that," Sephiroth whispered.

Ezekiel began to snore.

The police arrived fifteen minutes later, armed and nervous.

They were handed the video recording and snapshots of Ezekiel in the act of poisoning the water, proving beyond a doubt that he was guilty. Included were some samples of his fingerprints on the tank ladders. They only gave the evidence a cursory look-over in favor of goggling at Sephiroth like he was something behind bars in a zoo. Zack couldn't blame them; the General practically glowed with restrained power. Few people had lived after seeing the General like that.

There was a cash reward for the capture of the terrorist and a very public trial that they were forced to attend the next day.

The President made it as high-profile event as possible, emphasizing Sephiroth's rather key involvement. He lied through his teeth and said that his indifference to the poisoning had been a ploy to lull the terrorist into a false sense of security while he had his top men hunting the man down personally.

Sephiroth wanted to castrate him but said nothing. He just wanted this over with. Hopefully, now that the security around the water was actually functional, the city would begin to heal. Without the constant feed of Mako there was a high chance that the disease would die. The labs still didn't have a cure that wouldn't kill the subject after healing it.

~000~

Harry was folding towels in his new shelters with one of his managers as a sort of bonding experience when he began to feel dizzy. He carried on thinking that it was just the stress and that it would pass, but then his body began to jerk. He collapsed on the floor, hitting his head on the table on the way down. His body went into spasms.

The manager screamed and went out to get the healer. When they returned Harry was deathly pale, still as a corpse, and in a coma.

~000~

End chapter 20

Oh look, it's a mini update! Isn't it cute? I know its disappointing, but its also the byproduct of the fact that I am an adult with responsibilities other than writing things I don't get paid for. *sigh*


	21. Chapter 21

CHAPTER 21

Aerith had Harry put on a table so she could spell cast him easier. Thankfully there was only a small cut on his head that didn't look like it could have given him a concussion. She said a healing spell for it anyway and smiled when the cut and the gray cast to his face disappeared.

Next she cast the strongest Cure she could to try and shock him out of his coma. This was something she had found helped others sent into similar states from the Mako recover and heal. The magic hovered around him for an ominous amount of time before slowly creeping into his skin. There was no effect.

She let out her breath slowly. She felt weak from the magic that last spell had cost her. To see so much of her magic fail so miserably was heartbreaking. She leaned forward and laid her hand on Harry's chest to make sure that his heart was still beating. It was, though the rhythm was unsteady and stuttered a few times as she felt for it.

"Call an ambulance. He needs professional care."

There was some murmuring about how much this would cost. Because of the widespread underground use of Materia, hospitals were reserved for invalids, serious cases, and potential vegetables. They were also very expensive and considered something of a luxury meant only for the rich.

"We can afford it," she assured Janet when the older woman took her aside to discuss with her the other women's feelings.

"Are you sure it's worth it? I don't want to sound callous, but he might not live all the way through the ride to the Upper Plate."

Aerith smirked, "He'll make it. Harry's a fighter."

Finally after further grumbling an ambulance was called. It arrived ten minutes later and three men in white uniforms bustled in with a stretcher. They ogled the plethora of women, most of them holding or carrying children. They were glared at and ordered to get on with it.

The ambulance ferried Harry and Aerith to the heavily-guarded elevator built especially for the use of hospitals for transporting Lower Plate inhabitants up to the hospital itself, which was perched directly above the elevator.

Faint piano music played during the long ride up. Aerith glared at the still-staring hospital workers. Unable to take their odd looks anymore, she tartly asked, "Is there something wrong, gentlemen?"

"No," they mumbled in unison. She huffed.

Without their rudeness to distract her anymore, she was left to worry about Harry. When she'd first heard about someone wanting to start a shelter for pregnant girls, she hadn't believed it. Her next thought was that he was some kind of pervert who wanted an excuse to eye as many young pregnant women as possible. And then her curiosity became too much for her. She couldn't stop thinking about the big what if; what if this was for real, and someone finally cared about the people below the Plate?

His name was fairly well-known by then. Contacting him was easy. She flirted her way into getting a friend of a friend who worked at the PHS headquarters to track down the number of Harry J. Potter.

She kept his number for a week after getting it. She was too shy to call a complete stranger at first. But news that the shelter was about the open gave her the courage she needed to call him. He sounded much younger than she'd been expecting and agreed to meet her without any arguing or demands to know who she was working for. In Midgar, that was a good sign.

Outwardly friendly, she was wary of him for the first few weeks they worked together. She still suspected that he was a pervert or that the shelter was really just part of some diabolical plan. That changed the more she got to know him. He worked too hard for the girls to be just some careless jerk. His commitment to the girls and the way that woman Venus trusted and believed in him was enough to win her over at last.

Now, though, she almost wished that she was still suspicious of him. If she was, she wouldn't be so frightened now. What would become of them without him? Sure, they had loads of regular donors from the Upper Plate and no matter what happened they would have plenty to eat and a roof over their heads. But Harry was the brain and the soul of the shelters. He was what gave them hope that they could build lives together from the ground up.

Her bracelets clinked on her bare arms with every tremble of breath. She knew she was starting to panic and held it down as well as she could. She reached out to the Planet and could have cried when she got only a weak whimper from the dying soul center.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded, feeling tears slipping down her face. She knew the Planet was very weak and that it was selfish to pray to it and ask for anything at all, but she prayed for Harry's life anyway. She prayed that he would wake up healed.

The fee to admit him into the hospital for monitoring and life support was exorbitant and almost made her hair curl. She paid it out of the communal fund that supported the shelters and took a seat in the hall to wait for the doctors to come out and talk to her.

It was a tense half hour before a short mean-looking man came down the hall to her. He plopped down on the plastic chair opposite of hers and put the folder he'd carried under his arm on his lap.

"Are you Aerith Gainsborough?"

She sat up straighter, "Yes. Is he going to be-"

"You'll be lucky if he lasts through the night," he said in cold brutal tones, making no effort to make things easier to bear. Her breath caught in her chest. She unconsciously lifted her hand to feel for the white Materia that she kept clasped in her hair.

"Is there nothing you can do for him?"

"No," he said in that same cold voice. She shivered involuntarily. "All we can do is keep him under observation and keep him fed and clean until he either dies or comes out of his coma. I have to say it's a miracle he's alive. You'll see why in a minute."

He opened the folder on his lap and handed it to her. She took it in her hands and tried to make sense of the confusing jargon and diagrams spread out on it. She looked at him helplessly.

"What does it mean?"

He pointed to a diagram at the top with a percentage. She frowned and he explained, "That's the amount of Mako in his body. It's like he's been drinking it straight instead of diluted in the water. Does he drink a lot of water?"

She shook her head, only dimly hearing his question. The number seemed impossibly high now that she knew what it stood for. How could one body have room for that and things like organs and blood?

The doctor explained the rest of the diagrams to her, his voice gradually softening when he realized that, even though she was from below the Plate, she wasn't a hooligan or prostitute. Now that she knew what the doctors knew, it was mind-boggling. The sentimental part of her wondered if Harry had lived so long because his heart was so big and strong.

At the end of their consultation he stood and said, "I recommend that you spend the night so that someone can come get you if his condition gets more critical than it already is. You know, so you can be there for him during his…last moments. I'll make sure the nurses don't make you leave unless you want to."

She nodded and gave him a small sad smile, "Thank you."

He jerked his head and left as quickly as he'd come. She wondered how many other patients he had to see to. Somehow she didn't think it was very many. This hospital was small but it felt empty. There was the whisper of a nurse's feet on the floor every half hour or so and the quiet beeping of machines, but it was otherwise silent. She called the shelter and let them know that she was spending the night and that Harry was very, very sick. Venus, who'd answered the phone, sounded as though she'd been crying.

She spent the night in the hospital lounge with her head leaning against a Coke machine, kept wide awake with worry.

Very early in the morning the doors opened and her boyfriend, of all people, strode in. He scanned the lobby until his eyes landed on her. She blinked at him blearily and wondered if she had finally fallen asleep and was dreaming now.

He sat beside her and handed her one of those white cardboard cups filled to the brim with expensive coffee. She was grateful for the scalding bitter coffee. The taste of it restored a sense of reality to her actions. Harry, her friend and sort-of partner in restoring goodness to Midgar's depressed circumstances, was dying. And she didn't even know if he would live through today. The doctors were still gasping over the miracle that he'd made it through the night without worsening.

"I went down to see you last night and your mother said you'd gone to the hospital with a friend. I would have come sooner but I had to attend this trial thing for work. How is your friend?"

She felt his hand cover hers and squeeze. She swallowed another gulp of coffee before she whispered out loud what had resounded through her head all night,

"He's dying. And I can't even sit with him. The doctors are afraid that the Mako inside of him is so strong it'll bleed onto me if I get too close."

"Sweetheart, that's awful…" he put his arm around her and pulled her practically onto his lap. She closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Zack realized she was asleep and rescued her coffee before it could fall to the floor and burn either of them. He eyed it for a moment before shrugging and taking a sip. Waste not, want not.

Elmyra hadn't mentioned that Aerith's friend was a _man. _Zack wasn't a jealous man under normal circumstance, and certainly, out of all woman on the Planet, Aerith was the least likely to betray him. But spending the night at the hospital with some guy he had no idea she was friends with was stirring up all of his possessive feelings. And who said jealousy was a rational concept?

He sighed and stretched out his legs. He wondered who the guy was. If Aerith wasn't sleeping on him, he would've gotten up and taken a peek at him.

~000~

The first thing Sephiroth did when he had a spare moment was to call Harry's brothel and put his entire share of the reward money towards an entire week of his time. It was enough to compensate all the other appointments that would have to be cancelled, and he was confident that by that evening he would have Harry in his arms or his bed; or maybe both. Both were appealing.

The man on the other end of the phone took his hopes and stomped on them. Harry hadn't been to work for a full day. They said he was sick and in the hospital. No, they didn't know why or when he would be back. Yes, everyone else was being told the same thing. This wasn't some kind of scam.

He hung up feeling a confused cocktail of emotion. He was angry, disappointed and worried. There were only a few things that called for a visit to the hospital and none of them were good.

Still confused he went to work and tried to concentrate as the day went by. He had been busy lately handling Ezekiel and yelling at Willkie and his menial routine tasks piled up in his absence. He wanted to go to the hospital and investigate but he wouldn't have any way to explain his presence there. That and Joan would remove his manly parts, which he was more attached to these days than he had been a year ago, if he skipped.

Halfway through the afternoon Zack came into his office. He raised his eyebrows at him.

"I wanted to apologize in person for being absent today. You may punish me any way you think sufficient."

Sephiroth hadn't realized he was gone, swamped in work, but he didn't let that show. He frowned, "What were you doing all day?"

"I went to see my girlfriend. She's at the hospital as support for a friend of hers that's dying. I was just going to comfort her for a few minutes and still make it to work on time but then she took a nap on me and you know what that's like. I kind of passed out and just woke up 30 minutes ago. I ran the whole way here."

That would explain why his eyes were a little brighter than usual and why he looked rumpled. There was also a small damp stain on his left pectoral, possibly drool from his girlfriend. Sephiroth sighed.

"Sit down and help me with these. If anyone asks I made you run around the circumference of the city 50 times."

"Cool," Zack didn't question his unexpected good fortune and sat down. Sephiroth handed him a stack of the usual boring paper that any bureaucracy breeds and they settled down to work. It wasn't until he was reaching the bottom of the last stack and his brain began to surface from robot mode to higher functions that his mind drew a correlation between Zack's girlfriend and Harry both being at the hospital.

He finished the stack and helped Zack complete his before asking, "Is her friend someone you know?"

"Who? Oh! I don't think so. I didn't see him. Supposedly there's so much Mako inside of him that they think it'll bleed onto anyone that comes too close."

That didn't sound like Harry. Harry had been pale and tired last time he'd seen him (and there was the thing with the blood), but he didn't think he needed the hospital of all places. But then…the person he'd spoken to at the brothel said Harry was too sick to come to work. The places began to fit together, and his stomach twisted painfully inside of him.

He finished in a hurry and dismissed Zack. Striding out of his office, he almost made it out to the hall before Joan came stalking behind him and demanded to know where he was going when he had a troop inspection in thirty minutes. He cursed and sulked in his office until it was time for yet another duty of being General of the Army.

The troop inspection was interrupted by one of his grunts having a Mako-induced violent fit. He broke someone's arm before he was restrained and taken away to the labs. Everyone pretended that he was being taken there for treatment, but they knew that he was really going to be put down like a rabid animal.

In a wave of pity for his dwindling men, Sephiroth arranged with the kitchen staff to serve them something with chocolate in it. Chocolate wasn't just a mood-lifter for women. A few mustered the strength to smile at him when they found out he'd given them desert. He gave them his brave look, the one that inspired trust and admiration.

And then he got the hell out of there. He actually ran in the areas he knew to be unsupervised. He had to go up to his quarters to change out of his armor, which was unnecessary but added a sense of ceremony to his inspections. Dressed in business casual clothing so he wouldn't panic the staff at the hospital, he stopped to look in the mirror. He didn't normally bother with mirrors, but today he wanted to see if he looked as worried as he felt.

He didn't. He just looked annoyed and a little stressed; both completely normal for a busy military commander even at peace time.

He breathed a sigh of relief and then ran for the elevator.

~000~

Harry swam in a sea of pain.

In one of his few lucid moments he wondered if this was what werewolves felt during the full moon: all of their bones breaking and melting into different shapes, their muscles stretching and snapping to cover them, and fur pricking you like needles as it sprouted out.

His body was full of something green. This much he was aware of. He suspected that the green his subconscious showed him was Mako, and wondered if this meant he was dying. Or maybe he was dead. There is no evidence that after-death is painless. Maybe this was Hell.

Across the screen of his mind's eye he saw the white, presumably his magic, twist around the green. They twisted and wrestled and fought as though there wasn't room in his body for both of them. They fought and fought and fought. Every part of him ached from the strain of it even though his physical body remained still as death on a white hospital bed.

And then, after what could have been years of black agony illuminated by the warring light, they began to melt together. He had seen many strange things in his life, but the sight of his native magic blending with something foreign was the strangest. It began to spread out across his body, down to the very cells and code embedded in his body's foundation.

It felt _good. _

The pain from before was forgotten as what could only be described as euphoria sailed through him. The blackness was gone now, but the light was no longer jarring. Now it was soft and soothing and yet stronger than iron. It swept through him over and over again until every last drop and sliver had found a home inside of him.

The constricting pain in his chest, the difficulty breathing and performing bodily excretions, disappeared.

He fell into a deep sleep.

~000~

Sephiroth made it to the hospital in record time and left a trail of black rubber on the spotless white floor of the hospital when he skidded across it to stand in front of the desk. The nurse behind it stared at him with wide eyes. He wondered what was wrong before remembering that, to those outside of Shinra that didn't live in the slums he was something of a celebrity. He smiled and did his best to look as charming as possible.

"Good evening, ma'am."

"G-good evening; can I, uh, help you?"

"Yes! I would like to see your guest book, please."

She handed it to him, still staring. He ignored her now in favor of scanning the recent arrivals. He had to fight to keep his composure when he saw that Harry had checked in two days ago. He thanked her and handed back the guest book. She took it like a zombie.

He located the room without any trouble as there weren't many rooms to choose from. Sitting on a chair outside the room was a small person in a pink dress. He frowned at her and wondered if she was Zack's girlfriend. She looked up from her knitting. He noticed that it was a blue baby sweater. Her eyes went wide.

"Oh…General Sephiroth. What a surprise," she said in a small voice. She seemed frightened. He frowned harder. What the hell?

"Yeah, hi. Nice to meet you. Look, can I get in there?"

He was being kind of rude, but worry did that to him. He could find out if she was dating his lieutenant later.

"I don't think they want us to-"

"That's a yes," he interrupted and opened the door without further preamble. The small figure on the bed sent dread through him. He closed the door behind him like a man asleep and then moved slowly towards the bed. Was Harry this small normally? He didn't think so. He could pass for a child.

He reached out without noticing how badly his fingers trembled and touched Harry's cheek. Harry didn't respond. Still barely aware of anything but how pale Harry was, he put one knee on the bed and grabbed the headboard. Thus leveraged, he crawled onto the bed and curled himself around Harry. He was careful not to disturb or tug on any of the wires or tubes violating Harry's body.

Harry was limp in his arms but he was still warm and that was enough to convince Sephiroth that he was still alive. He rested his forehead to the top of his head and laid there with him all through the night. There seemed to be a heavy fog in his head. His head ached with unshed saltwater and his ears throbbed. The physical symptoms of his emotional agony made his despair stronger.

At one point the door cracked open and a nurse came in, presumably to check that the machines were still functioning properly. She jumped and screamed when she found Sephiroth there. He scowled at her and she didn't dare to ask him to leave.

He must have fallen asleep because he woke up to the sensation of Harry curling a hand into his hair tight enough to pull. He winced and tried to jerk away before he woke up completely and realized what this meant.

Harry woke up when he did this and stared up at him with glowing eyes.

Outside, a collection of dying plants in a window box, the last bit of brown vegetation left in the dying city, burst back into life.

~000~

End chapter 21


	22. Chapter 22

Note: Yes, this is what you think it is.

CHAPTER 22

"Sephiroth…"

He gaped. He'd come here thinking that Harry was on his death bed, and yet here he was looking still thin and pale but so very _alive _it sent tingles down his spine. There was something about the glow in his eyes that spoke of eons of power held back only by the very loosest-held leash. Harry took his hand from his hair and touched his cheek.

"You're real; you're really here, with me."

He stayed silent. What could he possibly say? His mind was still frantically developing theories and double-checking current facts about Mako sickness. Was this normal? He knew that the few who conquered the sickness became physically and mentally stronger overall, and sometimes developed bizarre magical aptitude. Perhaps that was all that had changed about Harry. Still, he remembered meeting one of the recovered sick and not being half as aware of their magical aura.

The door opened just enough for Zack to poke his head around it. He jumped when he found his boss in the same bed as Aerith's male friend and his possible future rival. His eyes took in that he was awake, that his eyes glowed, and that he was too close to General Sephiroth to be just friends. He squinted and realized that he had seen this guy before, though he wasn't so pale and thin last time. He was the same guy he found in Sephiroth's apartment all those weeks ago!

Well. Who would've thought that they were all connected like this?

Sephiroth glared at him and hissed, "What is it, lieutenant?"

"Nothing!" he yelped. He quickly shut the door before Sephiroth could throw something at him. The sound woke Aerith, who had fallen asleep leaning against the wall. She started and asked what the matter was. He smiled at her to hide how shaken he was and told her that Harry was awake.

Before he could stop her she was inside the room. He threw up his hands and dropped heavily into Aerith's still-warm seat. Maybe Sephiroth would let her stay because she was a friend of Harry's. He smirked. He never thought he'd see the day when his boss, of all people, would cuddle with somebody on a hospital bed. It was surreal.

Inside the hospital room Aerith eyed the General warily. Sephiroth eyed her back and readjusted his hold on Harry. Harry was looking sleepy again but he roused himself when he saw Aerith and actually sat up. He held out his hands to her like a child.

She came forward and took them, tears threatening to escape.

"I'm so glad you're awake! I thought…I thought you were dying."

"You don't need to worry about me anymore. I've won. I'm well again."

Aerith covertly stretched out the part of herself that was more-than-human to confirm this and found herself blinded by what appeared to be a supernova of Mako and something else, something bright white, mixed in with it. She blinked rapidly and returned her mind to its human parameters. Harry's eyes were narrower than they'd been a moment ago and she knew he knew what she'd done. She couldn't meet his eyes. They were going to have a personal talk later, she knew, to answer one another's questions.

"I'm so glad," she said again and smiled. Her eyes flicked to the general. He was impassive but his white knuckled grip on Harry betrayed his eagerness for her to leave. She decided that he didn't know who (or what) she was, and therefore it was unlikely that he would report to Shinra that he'd found their escaped Cetra.

She left them alone after making sure that Harry would be alright on his own. She went below the Plate to share the good news in person at the Shelter and check up on her patients. One of them was due to give birth very soon and most of the girls preferred that she be present during their labor.

There was a mob when she arrived and she had to shout the story a couple of times before everyone heard and understood what happened. Just as things were winding down, someone pounded on the door. Janet opened it and found a man roughly the dimensions of a brick wall on the other side. His eyes were so swallowed up with muscle that he appeared to have a squint he couldn't fix.

"Where is that son of a gun Potter?"

"In the hospital. Who are you?" Janet demanded, cocking her hips and giving him the hairy eyeball. Aerith wormed her way to the door to do damage control. She'd noticed, judging by General Sephiroth of all people, that Harry had interesting friends.

"I'm his boss, that's who! He hasn't been at work for days and I had to hunt him down like some kind of monster. You said the hospital; is he dying?"

"Not anymore," Aerith cut in, sending Janet back and away from the door. Janet stalked off to the kitchens to manage somebody, leaving Aerith with Harry's disgruntled boss.

"Harry was sick?"

"Yeah- the doctors said that they'd never seen such a severe case."

"That can't be right," he sounded stunned. "Doesn't Mako poisoning make you weak? Harry worked with the energy of three employees; that's why I even bothered to come looking for him. He's worth ten times what I pay him, for fuck's sakes."

"Well, I suggest that you visit him at the hospital and discuss this in person. I am not in a position to answer questions on his behalf," she used a no-nonsense tone of voice that brooked no argument. The man grumbled a little but stalked off in the direction of the train station. Aerith returned to her duties.

O

Sephiroth was eventually called away to attend to an emergency involving three of his SOLDIERS wreaking Mako-fueled havoc in the military training facilities. Harry was sorry to see him go, but he did need to rest if he expected to return to work before the month expired.

Robert showed up around noon with an angry speech about absenteeism. Harry was forced to explain to him that he just couldn't make any predictions about his health. Already, less than a full day since regaining consciousness, he had regained a considerable portion of his strength. The hospital insisted on keeping him there for observation, but he was veritably healed.

By the end of the day, the hospital was forced to allow him to get out of bed to meet with concerned charity donors desirous for information about the impact of his health on the development of the adjoining center for orphans located in the new facility. Harry reassured them that he was on the mend and that the new center was expected to become functional in two weeks. His hands were pressed by the men and his cheeks kissed by their wives and grandmothers. As far as they were concerned, all was well again.

Finally, he was left in peace to slowly go mad with worry about the fate of Midgar as a whole. Living in a haze of exhaustion and bills, he hadn't had the time to follow the news. Trapped in his bed, he couldn't escape the horrifying statistics delivered by the sad-eyed news reporters. It was estimated that more than half of Midgarian citizens, nearly two thirds, were now suffering from Mako disease. Most were confined to their beds, but some were restless and violent. Groups of the second category now roamed the Lower Plate in packs, preying on the few who dared to walk the streets.

The man responsible for the mass poisoning, Ezekiel Munro, was executed during Harry's coma. But the after-effects of his crime remained. ShinRa was said to be working night and day on a cure, and the city's funds were channeled into the procurement of new water purification systems and the importation of unpolluted water from the surrounding cities during the interim in an attempt to keep the healthy citizens (those too poor to evacuate) from becoming ill. Still, the damage was done. Midgar, the axis of Gaia's political, military, and electrical power was effectively in shut-down.

It is hard to act against a faceless enemy.

He turned off the TV and curled onto his side, looking at the flowers Aerith left him. One of the blooms was a little wilted. Without thinking, he reached out and touched it. It's drooping stem straightened and its petals regained their previous buoyant appearance. He froze and then slowly withdrew his hand.

It'd been so long since he last practiced magic that he forgot what it looked like. He knew, empirically, that Aerith practiced magic. He knew that Sephiroth used Materia while training his men. But somehow he'd forgotten the reality of it. How long had it been since he last held his wand? Months, maybe even a year.

An idea began to form. If he could heal a flower just by touching it, what could he do to a Mako victim? Probably nothing, but it was worth a shot.

He was under strict orders to stay in bed between the hours of nine and seven, but rules were made to be broken. He ever so carefully disengaged the single wire attached to his wrist, which monitored his Mako levels. The linoleum floor was cold but he didn't notice- his excitement made him feverish.

He had originally intended to seek out a patient suffering specifically from Mako poisoning, but now that he was on his feet, he wondered why he was being so selective. It was far more humane to start with the nearest patient and see what he could do to ease their suffering.

There was no nurse in sight, so he slipped into his neighboring patient's room without being seen. He knew that they didn't have surveillance in this building- their budget could not stretch to accommodate the cameras and necessary monitoring personnel. If an important patient desired greater security, they had to provide for it out of their personal resources.

The young girl sleeping there was fifteen or sixteen years old and recovering from a heart attack induced by an eating disorder. From the expensive trinkets littering the room, he surmised that she was the ignored daughter of one of the wealthy families populating the Upper Plate.

Unsure of where to start, he gently laid his hand on her exposed foot and closed his eyes. He willed her to be well, and felt his magic flow out of him. The sensation of using his magic like this was subtle, like submerging his body in warm water. Her foot seemed to swell beneath his hand. Alarmed, he removed his hand and opened his eyes. He caught his breath. Where a skeleton once lay was a healthy girl whose body no longer wheezed when she drew breath. He hadn't realized just how thin she was until he saw how dramatically different her face was.

He wondered if he had managed to improve her mental state. He supposed that it was well enough that he'd removed her from imminent threat of another heart attack.

Moving down the hall, he found a Mako victim. Unlike the girl, this one was conscious. She was middle-aged. She was so wasted away with sickness that the skin of her face was like a thin damp tissue covering a skull.

"Who are you?" she croaked.

"I'm Harry, another patient. Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but I think I can help you."

"You're right: that does sound crazy. I've had everything done- every shot, every pill, and every procedure. There's nothing left to try. But at this point, I don't care. Do whatever you want. The doctors say I'll die soon anyway. It may as well be sooner rather than later."

Harry approached and took her hand. It was limp and clammy. In the faint glow of the night light, it looked nearly translucent. He closed his eyes and wished for her body to assimilate the Mako. She began to groan, and gripped his hand tightly. He tried to pull away but she wouldn't let him. Gritting her teeth, she whispered, "Don't stop. I think…I feel…"

And then her grip slackened. Harry did not withdraw his hand. He held his breath and waited. Then he yelped. Something wet began to seep out of her skin. It glowed bright green and hissed as it was exposed to oxygen. Thinking quickly, Harry scooped her up and rushed into the adjoining bathroom. Depositing her in the shower stall, he turned on the hand-held nozzle and began to rinse the Mako off of her. She shivered and shook throughout the process. He flicked on the light with one hand while continuing to rinse her with the other.

He couldn't believe his eyes. Her skin, previously a dull gray, turned pink before his eyes. Her wispy hair thickened, and her thin body filled out. She was still shivering as her body forcefully expelled tablespoons of Mako at a time, but she was smiling. The bitter resignation of before was gone. Her eyes shone with happiness.

She took the shower nozzle from his unresisting hands and began to wash herself with shaking hands. She began to stroke her new skin slowly with an expression of wonder. Harry averted his eyes, suddenly feeling as though he was intruding. He made to go.

"Thank you," she whispered to his back. "I won't ask how you did it. I don't think I could understand even if I wanted to. This is a miracle."

Harry nodded and left.

By morning he was exhausted. His magic, perhaps sensing his body's exhaustion, refused to cooperate. He slipped into bed just moments before his nurse came bustling in with a tray of breakfast. She tut-tutted when she saw his wan expression.

"Trouble sleeping?"

"Yeah."

There was a shout in the hall, and then a shrill scream. Harry smiled secretively as his nurse rushed out to investigate. The girl next door had awakened.

Harry checked out of the hospital amidst utter chaos. Those who had been conscious when he healed them respected his request for silence. By the time he was dressed in his street clothes and waiting at the train station to go Below Plate, the incident at the hospital made the news. It was broadcast over the radio that an angel of healing visited the hospital in the night. Already theories were circulating that the hospital had been the unwitting subject of a ShinRa test for a new cure.

He dropped by Robert's weapon's shop and informed him that he would be taking a two-week leave of absence to recover. Robert grumbled but allowed it when Harry gave him the numbers of several qualified young women from his shelter seeking employment. He made sure to include only those with the nerve tone and reflexes to withstand the pressures of working in a weapons shop. Just before leaving, he asked if Robert would be interested in paying some young women to deep clean his house.

"Well, it _is _my tenth anniversary next week…"

"There you go. Won't your wife appreciate a clean house for the occasion?"

Having successfully acquired temporary employment for at least two of his girls, Harry set off for the storage facility Francis Mosshart was converting into an orphanage. The exterior of the building was being wired with surveillance cameras as he approached, and security guards paced the perimeter with jerky, nervous steps. Everyone was on edge. Their sector did not have gangs of the Mako-crazed, but no one was comfortable to be in such exposed and vulnerable positions.

Francis spotted him from the second floor and hurried downstairs to show him the progress and ask his opinion on adding a fourth floor. Harry approved it. Thanks to his meetings yesterday, they could afford it.

Finally, he headed to the primary location of his charity work. Aerith met him at the door thanks to a quick call on his PHS. She threw her arms around him and squeezed him tightly just like Hermione used to do. He felt an overwhelming loneliness and longing to see the faces of his old friends. They'd begun to drift apart prior to his transportation to this world, but the things they'd gone through together…he could never be so close on such a personal level to anyone else.

"Are you okay? You've gone all quiet."

He mustered his faculties and smiled, "Sorry; I'm still not a hundred percent yet."

"Well, come inside. Let me make you some tea before you start in on your paperwork."

"That sounds great, but, actually, I was wondering if it was possible for me to take over the bath room this afternoon."

Aerith paused mid-step and turned her head to give him a funny look. "Um, why?"

Harry smiled mysteriously, "You'll see."

O

"I want you to use your men to control the gangs in sectors 3 through 6," Sephiroth's tone was not diplomatic or open to negotiation. The recent statistics were out of control, it just wasn't safe for him to send his SOLDIERs into stressful situations likely to speed their surrender to Mako. "And I'd like them to start by five o'clock today."

Willkie frowned and took a sip of beer. They were in Bailey's having their follow-up meeting. Sephiroth felt a little bad for throwing this much pressure on the Big Boss, but on the other hand the safety of the city was at stake. He didn't really care, at this point, about how comfortable or convenient a solution was. All that mattered was its effectiveness.

"General, sir, I'm just not sure that I can ask my men to do that. I may be their boss, but there is only so much you can ask a person to do…"

"I will behead you myself if the gangs haven't been reduced by ten percent come tomorrow morning."

"Consider it done," Willkie swallowed the rest of his beer in one gulp and left without saying goodbye or paying for the plate of greasy food he ordered.

Sephiroth covered the bill and nodded to Bailey. The pub was empty, and Bailey's double-barreled shot gun was not concealed beneath the bar as usual but in plain sight and easy reach.

"Be careful out there, General."

Sephiroth gave him a casual salute and stepped out into the polluted sunshine of Midgar. He walked a block in the direction of the ShinRa Tower before he remembered that he could technically be out for another thirty minutes without being missed by Joan. He spun around on his heel and took off for the hospital, hoping for a few minutes of one-on-one quality time with Harry.

As he half-walked, half-ran, he pondered his relationship with Harry. What were they? Harry clearly wanted him there, and said that he was his favorite. What did that mean? And what did he want it to mean?

He was very new to this. The closest he'd ever been to another person was with Angeal and Genesis, and he'd lost both of them to Mako and madness. And although he had fought alongside them and known them for years, he hadn't felt anything sexual for either of them. To complicate matters, sex was the only thing he wanted from Harry that was different from what he'd wanted from his friends. He didn't know what words would describe his longing to just be with him, to know everything about him, to rely on him and be relied on in return. It was like there was a Harry-shaped hole in his life and he couldn't feel truly satisfied until it was filled.

As the hospital he was informed by the highly flustered receptionist that Harry checked out hours ago. They were interrupted three times by the incoming day shift of staff that couldn't understand where all of their patients had gone.

"What do they mean, everyone is gone?"

"Well, sir, there's been a sort of…miracle. This morning, almost all of our patients inexplicably achieved full recovery. We are still trying to figure out what happened, but so far, no one will give us a straight answer. We are actually expecting a team of scientists from ShinRa, because most of the cured patients were Mako sufferers, but at this rate there won't be anyone for them to examine by the time they get here."

Sephiroth's eyebrows rose in spite of his self-control. "I…thank you. Have a nice day."

"Thanks," she called over her shoulder as she was dragged away by one of the nurses to help reconfigure their nearly-empty rooms.

Sephiroth walked slowly back to the ShinRa Tower. Was there a cure? He hoped so. The city was in shambles, and he was going mad with frustration and powerlessness. He knew that the poisonous effect was only the smallest of problems that Mako use was responsible for, but the greater implications for the environment were just too big for him to think about right now.

He rode the elevator up to his office alone, looking out the glass view at the empty streets and dark windows of the Upper Plate. As he prepared to step off at his floor, he heard a very quiet voice whisper his name.

He froze and looked around, even checked his PHS for an accidental dial, but there was no one. He was alone. Feeling cold all over, he did his best to shake the creeping feeling of being watched.

He proceeded to his office.

O

End Chapter 22


	23. Chapter 23

Note: Yes, I listened to way too much Whitney Houston while writing this.

CHAPTER 23

It was rather clever, the way he'd set things up. With Venus as his assistant, Harry began to heal Midgar's sick. Dressed all in black, with a festival mask of a Chocobo to conceal his identity, Harry laid his hands on the sick one by one. Most of his patients were too disoriented to realize what was happening, but all patients were put to sleep via Materia by Venus as a purely precautionary measure. He hadn't heard anything concrete, but the vague rumors of magically anomalous individuals being carted off by ShinRa's scientists for examination (and possible dissection) were enough to make Harry wary of attaching his name to a miracle of this magnitude.

The work was harder than anything else he'd done before. The sheer amount of magic that he forced his body to generate in his 45-minute shifts was enough to leave him shaking and dizzy for minutes at a time. He wished more than anything that his body could produce magic endlessly without stopping, but that just wasn't possible. He couldn't last even an hour without being forced to relax and recharge.

By the end of the first day, he'd healed almost a thousand people. He knew empirically that that this was a significant portion of the ailing still alive, but it felt like nothing at all in the face of those who still suffered. The knowledge that many more citizens would die that night without a chance to be healed was enough to leave him completely wired and wide awake…that is, until Venus cast Sleep on him.

The next morning he awoke to learn that Sephiroth came to the shelter and spent the night with him. Never in his life had he seen someone waggle their eyebrows as dramatically as Venus managed to do so that morning over their simple breakfast of porridge and stale toast. It was regrettable that the spell kept him from waking during Sephiroth's arrival. Harry badly wanted to see Sephiroth, to reassure himself that the General really was a part of his life. Still, knowing that Sephiroth slept beside him without expectation of anything but company was heart warming. He didn't want to read too much into it, but he was caught up in infatuated daydreams anyway.

He found himself quietly smiling for the rest of the day, even when he was exhausted and struggling to breathe from the immense pressure of expelling his magic into so many people.

By the end of the week, all Midgarians capable of visiting the shelter were healed. Miraculously, no one at the shelter, except perhaps Aerith, knew that Harry was personally responsible for curing them. They'd bought his lie that he stumbled across a special blend of Materia which allowed him to administer the cure (and, of course, he was sure to tie in that it was too dangerous for ordinary people to be exposed to it in order to prevent curious peeping eyes from discovering his secret).

All that remained of the sick were those too weak and too fragile to be moved from their private homes. Harry debated passionately with Venus about visiting them. She believed that the risk was too great for such a small percentage of the population. Harry argued that any life, no matter how insignificant, was worth saving. In the end they compromised- Venus allowed Harry to visit the houses, but in the guise of her bodyguard. He wasn't happy about her taking the responsibility for curing them, as it potentially placed her in the eye of ShinRa, but she insisted that it was the only way she would let him heal them. He didn't like to acknowledge it, but she was absolutely right to argue that he was more valuable to the charities than her.

Under the influence of Sleep, he was unable to actively take advantage of Sephiroth's presence in the evenings. Often the only sign he had come morning that the General was there was a faint imprint in his mattress and the smell of him on the sheets.

He wondered if Sephiroth suspected that Harry was behind the miraculous city-wide recovery. It helped that no one seemed to remember how they were cured, but he knew that it was only a matter of time before the situation was traced back to him. He could only pray that he was far away by the time his name was attached to the cure.

O

Sleeping with Harry was not planned, but Sephiroth didn't have much of a choice. Since the incident in the elevator he had become more and more on edge. The voice would speak to him at the most unexpected moments. Already he had gotten three (three!) stern lectures from Joan about proper nutrition and adequate sleep following bouts of strange behavior.

He was absolutely terrified. Fortunately no one else realized this, which meant that he could avoid a trip to the labs for a too-thorough examination of his mental state. The voice was not particularly threatening in of itself; he couldn't even understand the language that it spoke in. What mattered was the voice's existence. What was he hearing, and why?

He did his best to pretend it wasn't happening. For the most part he succeeded. He continued to file papers, manage the detoxification of his SOLDIERs, and even took a two-day trip to Wutai to put down a brief uprising.

Unfortunately, sleeping with Harry helped soothe him into a false sense of security. There was something about the deepness of Harry's sleep, his utterly limp and heavy body, and the soft sounds he made as he moved around in his sleep that made him feel like everything was right with the world. Harry could sleep like a baby- ergo, everything would be alright.

But things weren't alright.

Now that the city was, miraculously, cured, a meeting was called between the Board and the mob. Everyone was there- the President, Hojo and his lackeys, and Willkie plus cohort. The room, the largest in the ShinRa Tower, was packed to full capacity.

In the aftermath, he was unable to pinpoint the precise factors that resulted in his loss of control. From what remained of the security feed, he was sitting normally and actually mid-sip of coffee when it happened.

As if propelled by some force beyond human comprehension, he stood and flipped the table in one smooth movement. The table was bolted to the ground and made of reinforced industrial steel- a testament to the solidity and prowess of ShinRa. It crushed Heideggar, Toby Swick, and at least five others beneath its weight. Without pausing, Sephiroth charged across the expanse of carpet to the President. In a blur, he drew his ceremonial sword and beheaded the President. While dodging bullets from the Turks, he did the same to Willkie and Scarlet. From that moment on, the security feed crackled out, only offering occasional bursts of footage boasting a truly spectacular slaughter of Gaia's rich and powerful. Then Sephiroth disappears from the feed.

He is next seen on the surveillance covering the helicopter pad at the very top of the Tower. He stands silhouetted against the setting sun with his arms raised high above his head holding a struggling figure. After a breathless moment, the figure is thrown off the top of the Tower to die a smear on the sidewalk hundreds of thousands of feet below. The recovered body belonged to Hojo, the head of ShinRa's science department and the creator of the SOLDIER serum.

O

Harry agonized for two days after completing his healing work before he decided to go for it. He knew that Sephiroth was sleeping with him, that he'd come to the hospital as soon as he heard that he was unwell, and that he sometimes looked at him like…well, like what they had was more than just a business arrangement and sexual attraction. So today he was going to make a move, a bold one, and visit Sephiroth at his office just as normal office hours ended. If everything went as planned, they would go out to dinner that night and have a real conversation.

A body fell from the sky, smashing into an unrecognizable heap, two feet in front of him. He leapt back, letting out a startled yell.

He rushed inside to look for a security guard, but discovered pandemonium. He was nearly trampled by Shinra employees as they came pouring out of the elevator and staircases to rush the doors. Wading against the stream, he managed to get into the empty elevator just in time to ride it up. He only intended to ride it to Sephiroth's floor to see if he was alright, but some kind of emergency over ride code was in place, and he ended up riding it to the top of the building. He was disgorged onto a helicopter pad.

He gasped. There, on the other side, stood Sephiroth. He had his back to Harry, facing the city. Harry began to approach, but froze as soon as his magic began to crackle around him like an electrical field. There was something strange in the air, something evil.

Sephiroth jerked then, and fell to his knees. A moment later he'd struggled to his feet again, but he was reeling like a drunkard. He was dangerously close to the edge. Not seeing another option, Harry forced through his magic's resistance and ran to him. Changing his angle at the last minute, he tackled Sephiroth from the side.

The fact that he managed to knock him over successfully was proof enough that something was very wrong. He smoothed his hair away from his face and gently pried his eyes open with his fingers. His throat closed up with fear. Sephiroth's eyes were gone, replaced by those of a snake. The pupils were knife-thin, and radiated pure malice. The sensation of being in the presence of a great evil intensified. He knew then that there was something inside of Sephiroth, something horrible that wanted to swallow up the fascinating man that Harry had come to admire so much and leave nothing behind.

Without thinking, Harry squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with all his might on pushing the evil thing out of Sephiroth. He didn't stop to doubt himself or wonder if it would work. He just did it.

It was as though all the pain he'd ever experienced, ranging from paper cuts to the Cruciatus curse, conflated into one ocean of agony and swallowed him up. He couldn't draw breath to scream. He was unaware of fisting the hair on either side of Sephiroth's head and pulling it out by the roots. He did not feel it as his hands frantically dug and scrabbled at the synthetic foam of the helicopter pad, tearing it up by handfuls and breaking four of his fingers in the process. He did not feel blood begin to trickle out of his ears, eyes, nose, and mouth. There was only agony, agony and the knowledge that he was at war, that he was still pushing.

And finally, after an eternity of unimaginable horror and pain, he succeeded. The evil thing was gone. He collapsed on top of Sephiroth. Half-crazed from pain and exhaustion, he feebly searched the spiritual field of the planet for traces of the evil thing. He found many small evils, the souls of humans, but the great demon was gone.

Just before he sank into the blackness of unconsciousness, he felt Sephiroth slowly wrap his arms around him and kiss his forehead. With a sigh, Harry fell into a coma just as twenty Turks flooded the platform with guns at the ready.

He did not hear Sephiroth surrender or begin to explain himself.

O

ShinRa would never be the same. Less than two hours after the death of his father, Rufus Shinra announced his new position as head of the company (and ruler of the known world). All that survived of the original board members were Scarlet, Lazard, and Reed Tuesti. Scarlet announced plans to retire to her small private residence in Costa Del Sol for the foreseeable future. By proxy, Reed was promoted to Vice President, as Lazard was ineligible due to his military responsibilities.

The SOLDIER program officially imploded within days of the tragedy because those remaining of the science department were never given clearance by Hojo to learn the procedures for perpetuating the Mako levels of the military. Without his guidance, there was no one to interpret his cryptic hand-written notes, much less make sense of the incredibly complicated computer programs that he'd written to regulate the system.

It was the end of an era, but, under Rufus' leadership, the beginning of a new age.

Due to its role in reducing the population of the city by nearly a third (and causing much pain and suffering to those who survived), Mako was retired as a power source and replaced by its predecessor: electricity. The reversion to the earlier power grids had an excellent effect on the morale of the city, and productivity and employment rates rose by twenty percent in the first week following the switch alone.

Things were beginning to look up.

The Tower was repaired and reconfigured. The meeting room in which so many powerful people died was converted to a memorial for those who had died from or as a result of Mako poisoning.

Rufus proved to possess more political acumen than his father. Rather than present an elitist image, he did his best to give the impression (if not the reality) of a democratic society. For example, half of the floors in the Tower now served as apartments and small business offices for the public. Weekly meetings were held with locally-elected representatives of each Sector about such subjects as maintenance projects, education, employment, and public safety. One particularly ground-breaking project was to raise funds for a conversion of all roads on the Upper Plate into a translucent building material. The new material allowed broad bands of sunlight to shine on the Lower Plate, a change that lowered crime rates and improved the nutrition of Under-Platers.

Within and beyond the city, plants began to grow again. The desert slowly turned green, and soon the calls of birds and buzz of insects could be heard alongside sounds of traffic and human conversation.

In this time of new life and new beginnings, one dark cloud remained. Harry Potter remained unconscious. In fact, beyond his lack of decay, his body was effectively dead.

Sephiroth spent nearly all of his time in his apartment watching over him. He left it once in the morning and once in the evening to manage his troops and meet with any necessary individuals, but otherwise lived as a highly productive recluse.

When he viewed the security footage of his rampage, he expected to be imprisoned and publicly executed. However, Rufus, in a private meeting, revealed that it was ridiculous to hold him responsible for his actions when he was clearly not in control of his senses. What was not said was the fact that no one was entirely sure that it was possible to imprison him against his will, much less execute him. According to what could be deciphered from Hojo's records, Sephiroth could survive everything from poison to outright stabbing with various weapons.

Sometimes, on weekends, Sephiroth went Below Plate to offer his assistance at the charities that Harry founded, now run jointly by a flower girl named Aerith and an ex-hooker known as Venus.

It both improved and worsened his mental state to see the work that Harry worked so hard on. He'd done so much good in such a short time, and under horrible circumstances. The first time he actually realized that Harry worked days _and _nights in dangerous lines of work, he had to shut his eyes and just breathe slowly until he calmed down again. There were so many ways that things could have gone wrong, especially when he learned from Venus one booze-soaked evening that Harry also took checks from the police for vigilantism.

How had things managed to go so well, and then end so badly? Harry was still alive, but sometimes, in the early hours of the morning, Sephiroth wondered if it wouldn't be better if he'd died. Then, at least, he would have some closure. This ambiguous floating neither-this-nor-that state was driving him up a wall.

O

Harry married Ginny. They had two children, a boy and a girl, named Lily and Fred. Both had their mother's freckles and smile, and Harry had never loved anyone as much as he loved them. They lived in a small cottage a five-minute walk from the Burrow, and Harry quit his job at the Ministry to work with George in the joke shop. It was a simple life, but a happy one, in which his greatest ambition was to correctly cook a soufflé for his twentieth wedding anniversary.

Years passed, and he watched himself slowly become middle-aged and complacent beside his wife. He watched his children fall in love, and then have children of their own. Ginny got breast cancer and beat it in time for her fiftieth birthday. Everything was well. He finally had it all. The peace, the contentment, and the family he always wanted. He was never alone, and never felt unloved.

And yet, as time passed, dissatisfaction and a vague feeling of unease began to seep in around the corners of his life. Was this all there was, all that he was? A shop clerk who found the prospect of riding the London Tube exciting?

It didn't help that he sometimes heard a voice, as if from far away, begging him to wake up. Wake up from what? And who was it that wanted him to come back to him?

Then, one night, he was lying peacefully in bed beside his wife when he heard the voice as clearly as if its source was standing in the room with him. He sat straight up and listened with a rapidly beating heart as the voice cracked mid-sentence, and finally whispered,

"Oh, Harry, I think I love you. Please, please wake up. I can't stand this any longer…I…I think I'm losing my mind…"

It was as though a fog cleared. Harry recognized the voice. Sephiroth! He looked around his familiar second-storey bedroom with the confusion of a stranger. What was this place?

Frightened and confused, he got out of bed and ran down the stairs and out the door. Above him, the moon hung huge and bright. He stared up at it, breathing hard. With a start, he realized that his breathing was not labored. He looked down at himself, discovering that he was once again twenty-three years ago and as strong as an ox. He'd forgotten what it felt like to be strong, to have a body that did whatever he wanted without protest.

The voice came again.

"Harry, if you can hear me, please understand that I love you so much. I don't expect you to love me back, just…just be with me for a little while…"

Harry choked on a laugh, and wished that he could tell Sephiroth that he was an idiot if he thought that Harry didn't love him just as deeply.

And just like that he was awake as though he'd never slept. His body felt heavy with sleep and frail at the same time, and his arm didn't obey when he willed it to move. His eyelids felt like lead as he opened them.

Sephiroth lay beside him on his side, one arm loosely thrown over his chest. His eyes were closed, and he breathed slowly and deeply. Harry ever so slowly moved his fingers and then his forearm. Gently, he touched Sephiroth's cheek and tried to whisper his name. No words came out- only a thin rasping noise.

Sephiroth's eyes snapped open. Harry mustered the strength for a smile. This time his voice worked, and he managed to whisper,

"Hi."

O

Note: Yeah, so there should be one more chapter before this story is complete. Classes start on Monday, and I want this done before then. So yeah. This is officially the writing Olympics.


	24. Chapter 24

CHAPTER 24

The decision to live together was never formally discussed. It was merely understood that Harry was not allowed to even consider moving out of Sephiroth's Tower apartment in favor of his old place beneath the Plate. It was a true victory when Harry managed to convince Sephiroth that it was more practical for him to spend week nights sleeping at his charities rather than commute on the rickety public transportation system.

Although, if he was being honest, spending five days working with Aerith made it difficult to avoid having that dreaded conversation about their mutual magical abnormalities. It was finally understood that the conversation would take place in that notoriously slippery time referred to only as "tomorrow."

Harry's day-to-day existence revolved around the management of his four charities, while his weekends were spent exploring the landscapes of Gaia and his boyfriend's body. He was kept very busy, so busy that it was easy for him to gloss over the fact that he'd lost three months of his life to a coma in which he believed himself to be happily married to Ginny Weasley.

During his final visit to his former brothel (the charities became independent of his income during his coma), Harry learned that Ian and Steve had become involved and were quitting the business, getting normal jobs, and moving in together.

By and large, the bizarre events of Harry's initial adventures on Gaia were swept under the rug and forgotten about. He lived a completely legitimate existence, something that was difficult to master in the still-twisted city of Midgar. It helped to have the President on your side (for purely self-serving reasons of public image, of course), but not much.

Midgar was a much safer place to be following the scare of the Mako poisoning, and the lower population led to a reduction in numerous evils caused by over-crowding. As things were, Harry still carried a knife and avoided walking the streets at night when he could. Tonight, however, the streets could not be avoided. It was Thursday, so Harry intended to spend the night at the orphanage as usual. At the last moment, Zack called to tell him that he was throwing a very secret and very last minute surprise party for Sephiroth's birthday. Harry said nothing, but he knew that the lateness and secrecy of the party were unintentional by-products of the fact that Zack had likely forgotten his superior's birthday until two hours previous.

The train station was only four blocks from the orphanage. Harry whistled as he walked, hand on his knife and cell phone in his hand. He was not too worried about his safety, but it didn't hurt to be careful. It was well known that he carried almost no money because he threw everything donated into the charities themselves, and he was careful to not make new enemies.

When he realized he was being followed, he subtly quickened his steps and dialed Sephiroth.

"Hello?"

The fist hit him between his shoulder blades, knocking the air out of him. He dropped his cell phone and collapsed to his knees, gasping. The man stepped into sight. A hand grabbed the back of Harry's neck and jerked his head back and up so that the light of the newly-installed street lamps could fall on it.

"You're a hard man to track, Harry Potter."

Harry squinted up at his attacker, desperately trying to place him, but ultimately gave up trying. It was no use: he didn't recognize him.

"Do you know how much I'm going to enjoy this?" the man drew a long curved blade from his belt and smiled. "This is a custom-made blade, imported from Wutai. It's very special. The Wutainese, you see, are a highly ritualized society. They have strict rules for everything from greeting your mother in law to taking a shit. You're probably wondering why I'm telling you this."

Harry nodded, silently scrabbling in the grime of the sidewalk for his fallen weapon. The man kicked it out of reach without removing his eyes from Harry's face. Harry grimaced as the grip on his neck tightened to the point that he began to see spots.

"I'm telling you because this knife was specially crafted for revenge. But not just any revenge. No, that would be too simple. This is for gutting the scumbag, or scumbags as the case may be, responsible for killing a beloved leader. Do you understand, now? You killed Miles, and so now I'm going to kill you."

Harry frowned, "Wait, Miles Ennico? Or Miles Johnson?"

The man's face turned purple, "You killed Johnson too?"

Harry shrugged, "Well, yeah. I killed a lot of people like you. I can't be expected to keep their minions straight. Do I look like I have time for that? I run four charities, for fucks sakes! I am responsible for nearly five thousand people. I have bigger fish to fry than your desire for revenge."

The man looked flustered. "I…I…"

The grip on his neck slackened, and Harry took his chance. Without thinking about it, he head-butted the man's crotch as hard as he could. Free, he scrambled to his feet and grabbed his knife, which he stabbed perfunctorily into the man's leg. Collecting his phone, he sprinted for the train station.

The doors closed just as the man rounded the corner, and he was running too fast to stop in time. He smacked into the metal side of the train and was knocked onto his back. Harry watched a pool of blood form under his right leg where he'd stabbed him with grim satisfaction.

Someone tapped his shoulder. Harry turned and found Sephiroth standing there with his hands on his hips.

"Unbelievable; just unbelievable."

"Sephiroth? What are you doing down here-"

"No, shut up. It's my birthday. I am sitting in my office, fantasizing about what we were going to do this weekend to celebrate, and then you call me. You're obviously in danger, so I sprint seven blocks to catch a train down here, only to find that you somehow managed to take care of yourself."

Harry smiled, "Did I ruin your birthday?"

"No," he smiled back and kissed him, "I'm happy for any excuse to see you."

As they disembarked seven minutes later, rumpled from a series of highly inappropriate displays of public affection, Harry ever-so-casually said,

"Zack's throwing a surprise party for you, you know."

"Fuck that- let's get back on the train!"

Harry laughed and followed him back on board. Zack would forgive them… eventually.

O

At the party, to which the guest of honor never arrived, Reno sat glumly between Osbert Lancaster and Rufus Shinra. They were, perhaps unwisely for the middle of the week, well into their fifth round of tequila shots.

"Damn it, why did Sephiroth have to stake his claim on Potter? I can't compete with somebody like that, and I really liked that kid."

Osbert scowled, "You think you have it bad? I was seeing him three or four times a week for almost two months. I planned my entire week around those sessions."

"Well, at least the two of you managed to experience the glories of the great Harry Potter's skills in the bedroom," Rufus knocked back a shot. "I, on the other hand, donate eight percent of my income to him, and I haven't so much as seen him naked."

Reno and Osbert nodded with the solemnity of the very drunk, and Reno murmured, "That's rough, boss."

"Damn right its rough."

They drank in silence for some time until Reno said, "You know what? Fuck hookers, boys and girls. My mother was right: what I need is a good woman. You know what I mean? The old-fashioned kind who won't take any shit, but will still think you're a man even if you need to cry on her shoulder sometimes."

Rufus eyed him without speaking; his were eyebrows near his hairline. Osbert fell asleep and began to snore.

O

The reception for Ginny's wedding to Dean Thomas was held at the Ministry, as befit the union of the Heads of the Auror and Transportation Departments.

Luna got tired of the crush of paparazzi and old acquaintances, and wandered off to explore the rabbit warren that was the Ministry of Magic. Without meaning to, she found herself in the Department of Mysteries.

Lost in memories of her fourth year at Hogwarts, she wandered among the various heavily-warded artifacts. She went down a narrow hall, turned a corner, and discovered a niche containing a gray sphere with what appeared to be smoke seething inside of it. Without thinking, she reached out and touched it.

The room began to spin, and she screamed as her body vanished off the face of Earth.

O

End Don't You Want Somebody to Love?

O

Note: This has been an awesome experience. Thank you to everyone for your support! I would love to hear what you think of the story as a whole.


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